<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Readers Write: &ldquo;You&rsquo;re Too Cynical&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;I read Dave's Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets each time it is published,&rdquo; a reader wrote a while back.
I&rsquo;ve been doing this daily e-letter thing for 15 years now. I knew there was a &ldquo;but&rdquo; coming.
&ldquo;I have an overriding impression that he simply engages in diatribes and negativity.&rdquo;
Said another reader more recently: &ldquo;His raw cynicism can be a bit much.&rdquo;
One more email, last winter, addressing me directly: &ldquo;Like a smoker at a no-smoking venue, for nearly two years I have subtly jonesed for the time when your newsletter would come out each day.
&ldquo;But I think your dire cynicism has actually taken a toll on my soul.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s a heavy load to lay on me &mdash; but go on, sir&hellip;
&ldquo;I am a naturally suspicious and critical cat who does not easily trust things, but you too often leave me feeling like I have been in proximity to a Black Mirror episode.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Gee, I detect a pattern here.
I take these critiques seriously &mdash; as I take everything that comes into <a href="mailto:feedback@paradigmpressroom.com">our inbox</a>.
Long ago in pre-internet days, an old newsroom boss gave me a rule of thumb: For every viewer who called in to comment or complain about something in our newscast&hellip; there were 10 more who thought the same thing but didn&rsquo;t pick up the phone. I figure the same applies here and now.
But earnest as these critiques are, none of them is backed by concrete examples.
If someone, anyone, could point to something specific, well, then I could engage in a bit of self-reflection and make a course correction.
In the absence of such examples, however, I&rsquo;ve still tried to look inward. Am I too cynical?
What I&rsquo;ve tentatively concluded is this: If ever I end up in a cynical place, it&rsquo;s because of the idealistic place from where I start.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Adams&rsquo; Aspiration
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />And where I start is with the aspiration expressed by Founding Father John Adams during the American Revolution &mdash; in a 1780 letter to his wife, Abigail.
"I must study politics and war,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
&ldquo;My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."
Long before I encountered Adams&rsquo; letter, his ethos was my own whenever thinking about war and &ldquo;political economy&rdquo; &mdash; to use the term from the Founders&rsquo; day.
It&rsquo;s probably the ethos of anyone with a moral compass who thinks about these things, really. We aspire for humanity to move beyond war and want, conflict and hardship, so future generations can enjoy &ldquo;the good life.&rdquo;
Alas, Adams&rsquo; inspiring vision of each generation climbing to ever-greater heights of enlightenment was not to be.
Roughly 80 years after the American Revolution, the nation was torn apart by the Civil War&hellip; and two of Adams&rsquo; five great-grandsons ended up serving as Union officers.
(We&rsquo;ll come back to the significance of that 80-year interval later.)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Perhaps a goodly amount of your editor&rsquo;s &ldquo;cynicism&rdquo; is a simple function of when I was born and how old I am now.
I&rsquo;m an early-wave Gen Xer &mdash; at this stage of life, too old to belong to the 25&ndash;54 demo, too young to qualify for early Social Security.
I had the good fortune to enjoy 17 years of &ldquo;adulting&rdquo; at a time when America was still kinda-sorta a free and prosperous country &mdash; a period bookended by Ronald Reagan&rsquo;s &ldquo;Morning in America&rdquo; campaign of 1984 and the very different morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
I wish I had better appreciated at the time how good we collectively had it, given everything that was to follow.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Three Hammer Blows
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The federal response to the 9/11 attacks was the first of three hammer blows to peace and freedom and prosperity in these United States.
The Patriot Act, the warrantless surveillance, the Iraq War &mdash; and the groupthink condemnation of anyone who objected to those steps as &ldquo;terrorist sympathizers&rdquo; &mdash; I haven&rsquo;t forgotten.
It&rsquo;s what ultimately drove me out of the news business after 20 years.
In September 2003 &mdash; two years after 9/11 and six months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq &mdash; a poll showed 69% of Americans still believed Iraq&rsquo;s Saddam Hussein had a role in the 9/11 attacks.
If, like me, you took advantage of the internet to read the foreign press&hellip; or the skeptical reporting of the now-defunct Knight Ridder newspaper chain&hellip; or the scathing columns of the late Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com&hellip; you knew better, long before the U.S. tanks rolled in.
It was the instant I saw those poll numbers that I knew my chosen profession had failed spectacularly at its most solemn responsibility &mdash; as defined by Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case.
&ldquo;Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government,&rdquo; he wrote. &ldquo;And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.&rdquo;
The media was no longer &ldquo;free and unrestrained.&rdquo; It was domesticated and shackled.
Meanwhile, the government went on a mad spending spree after 9/11 &mdash; aided and abetted by Federal Reserve money printing.
The result was a bubble in the housing and credit markets that started to approach the bursting point in 2007 &mdash; just as I made my escape from broadcast news into financial publishing.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The second and third hammer blows were the bailouts after the 2008 financial crisis&hellip; and COVID lockdowns, restrictions and mandates in 2020&ndash;21.
I won&rsquo;t dwell at length on these episodes today. I marked the <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/two-disgraceful-anniversaries">16th anniversary</a> of the Lehman collapse and the bailouts that followed last fall. And I did <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/covid-9-11">a five-year retrospective</a> on &ldquo;COVID 9/11&rdquo; earlier this spring.
Together, these three hammer blows have made a mockery of the saying &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a free country.&rdquo;
Even Freedom House &mdash; a very mainstream nonprofit funded mostly by the U.S. State Department and other government grants &mdash; sees the declining trajectory.
In 2017, it rated America&rsquo;s combination of political rights and civil liberties at 89 out of 100. By 2024, the rating had declined to 83 out of 100.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />The Fourth Turning
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> To be sure, my &ldquo;cynical&rdquo; outlook is further colored by the conviction that we&rsquo;re hurtling toward the climax of what&rsquo;s called a Fourth Turning.
Today isn&rsquo;t the day to go deep into Strauss-and-Howe generational theory. Suffice to say that every 80 years or so, Anglo-American societies are convulsed by crisis, a &ldquo;Fourth Turning&rdquo; &mdash; and it&rsquo;s been that way going back to the War of the Roses in the 15th century.
&ldquo;History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted,&rdquo; demographers William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote in their seminal 1997 book, The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy.
&ldquo;The Fourth Turning necessitates the death and rebirth of the social order. It is the ultimate rite of passage for an entire people, requiring a luminal state of sheer chaos whose nature and duration no one can predict in advance.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />If you haven&rsquo;t figured it out already, we&rsquo;re in such a crisis era now. 
The generations with adult memories of the crisis before this one &mdash; the Great Depression and World War II &mdash; are mostly gone. They&rsquo;re not around to impart the wisdom that present-day movers and shakers need to avert a rerun of the crisis cycle. (And even if they were, present-day movers and shakers probably wouldn&rsquo;t listen.)
And that&rsquo;s how it always goes.
Strauss and Howe anticipated the onset of a new crisis era somewhere around 2005. Strauss died in 2007; as Howe sees it, the current Fourth Turning began with the 2008 financial crisis.
Fourth Turnings last an average of 20&ndash;25 years, but they&rsquo;ve been known to drag on for as long as 32.
We&rsquo;re not even 17 years into the current one. So we&rsquo;ve still got a slog ahead &mdash; as Howe made clear in his 2023 follow-up tome The Fourth Turning Is Here.
<blockquote> ➢ The authors were also far-seeing enough to anticipate that the internet &mdash; widely hailed in 1997 as a force for individual liberation and autonomy &mdash; might become a tool for collective surveillance and censorship.</blockquote>
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Fourth Turnings do come to an end. But they never end with the government smaller, less powerful and less intrusive than it was before the onset of the crisis.
Strauss and Howe don&rsquo;t state it exactly the way I just did. But going by their framework, the conclusion is inescapable.
For instance: Dwight Eisenhower became president a few years after the conclusion of the Great Depression-World War II crisis.
Upon taking office in 1953, he pledged his Republican Party would not undo the Democrats&rsquo; New Deal. Upon leaving office in 1961, Ike came to understand that the way Washington waged World War II gave rise to a &ldquo;military-industrial complex&rdquo; that operated beyond the control of elected leaders.
But, you ask, what about the American Revolution? That was a crisis era, right? And we freed ourselves from the yoke of British tyranny!
Tellingly, Strauss and Howe mark the conclusion of that crisis era not with victory at Yorktown in 1781 or ratification of the Constitution in 1788.
They mark it with the crushing of the tax revolt known as the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794.
Makes sense. That episode marked the defining victory of the Hamiltonians and a strong central government over the Jeffersonians and their vision of decentralism, devolution of power, subsidiarity.
The die was cast. Analogous to Ike in the 1950s, Thomas Jefferson did little to reverse the Federalist agenda during his presidency &mdash; his florid rhetoric about the &ldquo;Revolution of 1800&rdquo; notwithstanding.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Breaking the Cycle
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, &amp; government to gain ground,&rdquo; Jefferson lamented to his fellow Virginian Edward Carrington during the ratification debates in 1788.
And yet&hellip;
And yet in recent years I&rsquo;ve come to believe it&rsquo;s possible that humanity is on the verge of ascending to a higher level of consciousness that would break the crisis cycle &mdash; and begin to fulfill Adams&rsquo; aspiration.
(Why I believe that to be so would require a foray into spirituality that&rsquo;s much too far afield from this e-letter&rsquo;s focus on markets and the economy.)
Until such a time arrives, my guiding principle when I put fingers to keyboard each day is the one laid down by the fellow who gave me my shot at this line of work.
Sauve qui peut. It&rsquo;s a French expression that translates roughly to &ldquo;Let he who can, save himself.&rdquo;
See, one day late in my newsroom career, at a moment I was feeling despondent about finding something different to do, my wife pressed me to identify what I really wanted.
I blurted out the clumsy sentence, &ldquo;I want to help people.&rdquo;
I gave it a bit more thought and refined it: At the very least, I wanted to do something of greater service to my fellow humans than working in a newsroom.
And here I am. The great thing about the financial publishing industry is that our whole reason for being is to empower the people who&rsquo;ve sought us out, guiding them to achieve a greater measure of financial independence.
The more financial independence we have, the more time and attention we can devote to the things that really matter &mdash; deepening our interpersonal relationships and our spiritual lives. To grow closer to each other and to God (however you might define that).
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7oYSxRnn0K1kn3dU4bRXGm/bb0fd30540d88e9729368ae005299ef3/life-luxuries.jpg" alt="life luxeries" width="450px" />
That&rsquo;s the vision. That&rsquo;s the hope. In a way, that&rsquo;s the essence of Adams&rsquo; aspiration &mdash; for all of us.
It&rsquo;s what keeps me going each day.
Nothing cynical about that.
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets
P.S.&nbsp;The big market stories today are Walmart and oil.
Walmart issued its quarterly numbers this morning &ndash; but the numbers were overshadowed by news that the company will raise prices on at least some items affected by tariffs. Speaking of WMT&rsquo;s wholesale costs, CFO John David Rainey tells&nbsp;The Wall Street Journal, &ldquo;The magnitude and speed at which these prices are coming to us is somewhat unprecedented in history,&rdquo;
Ahead of the market open, WMT shares are down more than three-quarters of a percent. The major U.S. stock indexes are down about a third of a percent. Meanwhile, Treasury yields are pulling back after the 10-year note popped over 4.5% yesterday.
Crude tumbled hard after Donald Trump said, &ldquo;We&rsquo;re in very serious negotiations with Iran for long-term peace.&rdquo; He offered no details, but nonetheless a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is down to $61.48.
Precious metals are licking their wounds from the price action earlier this week &ndash; gold a few bucks below $3,200 and silver a few cents above $32. Bitcoin hovers just below $103,000.
The one surprise among the day&rsquo;s economic numbers is wholesale prices. Whatever Walmart&rsquo;s experiencing doesn&rsquo;t show up in the April producer price index, down 0.5% month-over-month. Year-over-year, the official wholesale inflation rate is 2.4%.
Thanks for indulging us with this unusual edition today. Back to regularly-scheduled programming tomorrow.

shutterstock 2468446181

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Paradigm Pressroom’s 5 Bullets is a daily e-letter covering the economy and the markets, reaching 120,000 paying subscribers of the renowned financial publishing firm Paradigm Press.

Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

Readers complain this editor’s “cynicism” is too much. But if ever I end up in a cynical place, it’s because of the idealistic place from where I start.

9/11, the Financial Crisis and COVID

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Summer 2025: Maxed Out?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />If you want to know what keeps America&rsquo;s energy planners up at night, just look at the numbers&hellip; 
This summer, PJM &mdash; the nation&rsquo;s largest power grid operator &mdash; expects demand to hit 154,000 megawatts (MW), enough to power over 120 million homes.
But in a worst-case heatwave? Demand could spike past 166,000 MW, threatening to outstrip reserves for the first time ever.
It&rsquo;s a scenario that would force PJM to call on emergency &ldquo;demand response&rdquo; programs, paying big customers to shut off the lights and keep the grid from buckling.
This isn&rsquo;t just a blip. It&rsquo;s the start of America&rsquo;s electricity squeeze &mdash; a reckoning with decades of flat demand, suddenly upended by the digital revolution.
For years, electricity demand in the U.S. barely budged, in fact, growing less than 1% a year between 2001&ndash;2023. To wit, a chart we&rsquo;ve referred to from time to time&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2YbmTm88vOJKR2kvTZJt4N/4917c142e2ace8002684670a4e381b42/5Bullets_Chart_051425.png" alt="something's gotta give" width="540px" />
And while policymakers focused on electric vehicles and the &ldquo;green economy,&rdquo; it turns out the <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-monster-that-ate-the-power-grid-ai">real disruptor</a> is artificial intelligence.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Data centers &mdash; those warehouse-sized &ldquo;brains&rdquo; of the internet, AI, crypto and more &mdash; already eat up 4.4% of America&rsquo;s electricity. By 2028, that could soar to nearly 12%. 
Meanwhile, S&amp;P Global predicts U.S. electricity use will jump about 25% by 2030, a pace not seen in decades.
And the surge isn&rsquo;t spread evenly. It&rsquo;s concentrated in &ldquo;Data Center Alley&rdquo; in Virginia, plus Texas, Ohio, Georgia and a handful of other states.
Utilities are scrambling. Entergy, for instance, is building 2,200 MW of new gas-fired capacity just to keep up with Meta&rsquo;s Louisiana data center. And pipeline operators report requests to connect 70 new data centers in 12 states.
Solar and wind? Growing fast, but they&rsquo;re not a silver bullet. PJM is urging owners of &ldquo;inverter-based resources&rdquo; to meet tougher standards to ensure reliability.
<ul>
<li>California&rsquo;s experience is a cautionary tale: Aggressive renewable mandates have driven up prices &mdash; residential rates now average 32 cents per kilowatt-hour, twice the national average.</li>
</ul>
For now, PJM, which manages the grid for 65 million people from Illinois to New Jersey, claims to have enough power generation for a typical summer.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> With hotter-than-normal weather predicted and record demand possible this summer, the margin for error is slim. If reserves run short, PJM will tap its 7,900 MW of contracted demand response, paying factories, warehouses and even some neighborhoods to cut usage in a pinch.
Behind the scenes, PJM is hustling to adapt:
<ul>
<li>Faster grid connections: By automating processes and adding staff, PJM has cut the backlog of new power projects by 60%. A new partnership with Google will use AI tools to further accelerate grid interconnections</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Reliability boost: PJM&rsquo;s one-time Reliability Resource Initiative will bring 9,300 MW of ready-to-build projects online by 2030 to fill capacity gaps</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Smarter demand response: New federal rules let customers reduce electricity use year-round, not just during summer peaks, making it easier for PJM to balance supply and demand.</li>
</ul>
But the grid&rsquo;s balancing act is getting harder: Old coal and nuclear plants are retiring faster than new resources can replace them.
&ldquo;This outlook at a record peak heat scenario reflects our years-long and mounting concerns as we plan for enough resources to maintain grid reliability,&rdquo; says Aftab Khan, PJM&rsquo;s head of operations.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Nuclear Comeback
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Here&rsquo;s where things get interesting: Americans&rsquo; attitudes toward nuclear energy are shifting.
According to Gallup, 61% now favor nuclear power &mdash; the highest since 2010, and up 16 points since 2016.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4bsE4kg0woSJvyftfgO4PR/7f3dc388b922b0ddb18b8bb11e22786d/Screenshot_2025-05-13_at_1.28.39_PM.png" alt="Americans' Opinion on Nuclear Energy" width="540px" />
Most notably, support has surged among Republicans (now 74%) and independents (64%), while Democrats&rsquo; support has held steady at 46%, according to Gallup.
Why the change? Partly, it&rsquo;s the sheer scale of the electricity squeeze. Natural gas is still king, providing 43% of U.S. electricity and fueling most new data center projects. But nuclear is suddenly back in the conversation, thanks to its reliability and zero-carbon credentials.
Even President Trump, who campaigned on an &ldquo;all of the above&rdquo; energy strategy, now touts smaller, modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) as &ldquo;cheaper, more scalable alternatives&rdquo; to the mega-projects of the past.
The Department of Energy is putting real money behind the idea, issuing $900 million in funding to accelerate the rollout of next-generation SMRs. There are now 42 SMR companies vying for a slice of the market, though none has broken ground yet.
America&rsquo;s electricity squeeze is real, and the digital economy is pushing the grid to its limits. With demand soaring and old plants retiring, the grid faces unprecedented challenges. Reliable natural gas will fill the gap for now, but nuclear is poised for a comeback.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Road Trip!
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;I&rsquo;m headed to Consensus 2025 &mdash; aka the Davos of crypto,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s crypto expert and intrepid road-tripper, Chris Campbell, who first recounts a timeline of past conferences.
&ldquo;The first event&rdquo; &mdash; in 2015 &mdash;&rdquo; was held in NYC, drawing a modest crowd of developers, VCs and early Ethereum enthusiasts,&rdquo; Chris notes. &ldquo;It was so early Bitcoiners and Ethereum bulls still (kind of) got along.
&ldquo;In 2017, the bull run sent crypto to the moon. Two thousand people showed up. Bitcoin hit $20k.
&ldquo;In 2018, over 8,000 people packed the Hilton Midtown. Lambos were parked outside. Celebrities made an appearance. ICO bros flooded the lobby.
&ldquo;2019? Doldrums. The bear market set in, the regulators were circling. Consensus talks pivoted from hopium to infrastructure and real use cases.
&ldquo;Miami 2021, [Bitcoin] bros were throwing parties that felt more like a rap music video than a financial awakening.
&ldquo;Austin 2022, [everyone] was glancing around nervously.
&ldquo;And [in] 2023&hellip; booths were empty, the atmosphere was apocalyptic and the spirit of Gary Gensler haunted the venue.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;Now, this year&rsquo;s Consensus feels different. Toronto 2025 feels&hellip; sober,&rdquo; Chris emphasizes.
&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s start with the obvious: Eric Trump is speaking. His new mining company &lsquo;American Bitcoin&rsquo; is reportedly going public.
&ldquo;Then there&rsquo;s Bo Hines,&rdquo; Chris adds. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s heading the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets &mdash; and he&rsquo;s laying out the White House's official strategy for crypto legislation. (Something tells me the words &lsquo;stablecoins&rsquo; and &lsquo;tokenized Treasuries&rsquo; will be uttered. A lot.)
&ldquo;Adrienne Harris, superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), will address regulatory frameworks in America&rsquo;s strictest state.
&ldquo;And the wild cards, like Dave Portnoy, who will talk about&hellip; Honestly, I have no idea.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;Three things I&rsquo;ll be tracking like a hawk&hellip; 
<ol>
<li>Stablecoins and Real-World Assets (RWAs) &mdash; Everyone from Larry Fink to your Uber driver is talking about tokenization</li>
<li>DePIN &mdash; Decentralized physical infrastructure is having a moment. Someone is going to figure out how to turn crypto into actual roads and wires. That&rsquo;s when the real fight begins</li>
<li>AI x Blockchain &mdash; Half the speakers will say this is the dumbest combo since orange juice and toothpaste. The other half are quietly funding it. I&rsquo;ll let you know who&rsquo;s right.</li>
</ol>
&ldquo;One thing I do know,&rdquo; Chris concludes. &ldquo;This year is different. It&rsquo;s not just another conference. It&rsquo;s a show of hands.
&ldquo;Is crypto still a punchline? Or is it finally growing up?
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m voting on the latter,&rdquo; he confirms. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m here to find out for sure.&rdquo;
We look forward to sharing more insights from Chris Campbell in the days ahead, and if you&rsquo;re attending Consensus 2025, Chris invites you to say hello.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Consulting our screen today, the crypto market is in the red: Bitcoin&rsquo;s down over 1% to $103,500; at the same time, Ethereum is down almost 4% to $2,595. 
Stocks, conversely, are hanging out in green territory. The tech-heavy Nasdaq&rsquo;s gained the most &mdash; up 0.60% to 19,130. Meanwhile, the S&amp;P 500 and Dow are up 0.20% and 0.05% respectively.&nbsp;
Crude is getting whacked today; a barrel of WTI is down 1.10%, priced just under $63. As for precious metals, gold is down 1.80% to $3,188.50 per ounce, and silver is down 2% to $32.45.
The yield on a 10-year T-note is up to 4.52% this morning &mdash; still ticking up, and reminiscent of April&rsquo;s <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/doge-boys-disappoint">bond market freakout</a> we mentioned in yesterday&rsquo;s 5 Bullets. 
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Trump Courts Syria&rsquo;s Ex-Jihadist
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> President Trump announced the lifting of long-standing U.S. sanctions on Syria, marking a dramatic reversal in American policy and igniting controversy. 
The move comes as Trump embarks on a Gulf tour dominated by massive business deals, including a $600 billion Saudi investment pledge and $142 billion in arms sales.
But central to the Syrian controversy is Trump&rsquo;s meeting today in Riyadh with Ahmed al-Sharaa, the country&rsquo;s &ldquo;interim president,&rdquo; who until recently led Hayat Tahrir al-Sham &mdash; a group with direct al-Qaida ties and a record of attacks on U.S. troops. Sharaa&rsquo;s rise to power followed the ouster of Bashar al-Assad; his appointment has not erased concerns over his militant past.
The optics are troubling: Trump is the first U.S. president to meet with a leader so closely associated with terrorism. Notably, Sharaa has yet to commit to basic U.S. demands, such as expelling foreign fighters or signing the Abraham Accords of 2020 &mdash; which would open diplomatic relations with Israel.
Instead, Sharaa has dangled lucrative incentives, including offers for U.S. companies to invest in Syria&rsquo;s oil-and-gas sector and even a proposal for a Trump Tower in Damascus.
These overtures would directly benefit the Trump Organization, which is reportedly pursuing new branded projects in Qatar, Dubai and Abu Dhabi as part of broader Gulf business expansion.
Like we said: Bad optics.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> On the other hand, credit where credit is due: This time, the endorsement comes from Arnaud Bertrand, an internet entrepreneur and forthright critic of Trump, whom we have occasionally cited.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5b0ctRe5vEcoTd7N8LYnGs/33eaaee22ec3ac895cca567e34a953f7/Arnaud2-white-play-btn.jpg" alt="arnaud tweet" width="450px" />
&ldquo;All in all,&rdquo; Bertrand says via X, &ldquo;whilst Trump can be criticized for many things &mdash; and I do so myself all the time &mdash; his recognition with this speech that different civilizational models can coexist without one imposing itself on others is actually a profound and immensely necessary step toward genuine peace &mdash; regardless of who articulates it.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" /> Elon, Yo Mama Is So&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Silicon Valley&rsquo;s crosswalks got punked last weekend. Hacked pedestrian signals in Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Redwood City swapped their usual &ldquo;walk&rdquo; and &ldquo;wait&rdquo; instructions for uncanny AI-generated banter from faux Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
For instance, pedestrians were greeted by a supposed message from Musk, including&hellip;
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;Will you be my friend? I&rsquo;ll give you a Cybertruck&rdquo;</li>
<li>&ldquo;You know, they say money can&rsquo;t buy happiness and... I guess that&rsquo;s true. God knows I&rsquo;ve tried.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
Meanwhile, a Zuckerberg soundalike introduced himself as &ldquo;The Zuck,&rdquo; before musing about &ldquo;insert[ing] AI into every facet of your conscious experience.&rdquo;
Burn? 
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/69fMDoXC0oTkLbVwNTIvoS/848447e593969da462f1594a9db3fd3d/WallStreetApes-white-play-btn.jpg" alt="wall street apes tweet" width="450px" />
The prank, which played out at about a dozen crossings &mdash; including some near Meta&rsquo;s sprawling campus &mdash; quickly went viral on social media, with locals alternating between laughter and confusion. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s quite an impressive form of protest art,&rdquo; one Redwood City resident told reporters.
&ldquo;City staff have disabled the audible feature until further repairs can be made,&rdquo; says Meghan Horrigan-Taylor, a Palo Alto spokeswoman.
So far, the identity of the prankster remains a mystery&hellip;
But leave it to some Silicon Valley nerd to hack pedestrian crossings with billionaire impressions instead of just lobbing a few classic &ldquo;Yo Mama&rdquo; jokes at Elon and Zuck.
Take care, reader! We&rsquo;ll be back at it tomorrow&hellip;
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/emily-clancy.png" alt="Emily Clancy" width="250px" align="left" />
Emily Clancy Associate editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

Summer

If you want to know what keeps America’s energy planners up at night, just look at the numbers. 

Summer 2025: Maxed Out? 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Here We Go Again
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />All is calm again in the stock market now that there&rsquo;s a truce in the trade war&hellip; but the bond market is once more showing signs of stress.
A quick refresher from last month: Bond prices collapsed, sending yields soaring, in the wake of the president&rsquo;s &ldquo;Liberation Day&rdquo; announcement. The yield on a 10-year Treasury zoomed up from 3.99% to over 4.5% in a week &mdash; a massive disruption in bond-land.
Recall that the stock market was selling off hard at that time. Usually Treasuries serve as a safe haven. At such times, bond prices rally and yields fall. But not last month. It seems foreigners in particular were eager to dump their Treasury holdings.
The mainstream narrative was that it was all Trump&rsquo;s fault with the on-again, off-again tariff uncertainty.
And while that was certainly part of the story, the trouble had been building for a while.
For one thing, the bond market is getting increasingly apprehensive about the gargantuan size of Uncle Sam&rsquo;s debt. The jitters were made worse when Congress moved last month to scrap a 50-year tradition called &ldquo;reconciliation&rdquo; that kinda-sorta kept the growth of the debt in check.
Too, there&rsquo;s lingering bad blood from when the Biden administration froze the U.S. Treasury paper owned by Russia&rsquo;s central bank &mdash; even handing the interest payments to Ukraine. Dozens of foreign leaders thought, If it can happen to them, it can happen to us.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Here we go again: The yield on a 10-year T-note is up to 4.47% this morning &mdash; nearly as high as it was at the peak of the bond market freakout last month.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/wY3A7AKKZHxKB5jua9gJ4/b3fd16538d848d413334e80c7641f7b6/5Bullets_Chart_051325.png" alt="this stress is back" width="540px" />
That&rsquo;s because two things happened after we hit &ldquo;send&rdquo; on yesterday&rsquo;s edition&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The first thing that happened is the Treasury Department issued its monthly statement of income and outflows for the month of April.
The April statement is usually an outlier: Uncle Sam records a surplus because of all those income tax payments. That&rsquo;s the case for April 2025, and indeed the surplus is higher than it was in April 2024 (helped a bit by record tariff payments).
But look at the spending column. Spending was up 4.4% year-over-year. What the hell is the &ldquo;Department of Government Efficiency&rdquo; accomplishing, exactly?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1HbWypdHORXeVfPTl0BiN6/7cf2648b62be17bdcbc338b35d61edea/5Bullets_DOGE_progress_chart_0525.png" alt="Are the doge boys dozing?" width="540px" />
For the first three full months of the Trump 47 administration, spending was a hair higher &mdash; about 1.2% &mdash; than it was during the same three months of 2024, when Joe Biden was handing out goodies in hopes of winning a second term.
<a id="2"></a>
The numbers are the numbers. And they don&rsquo;t live up to the DOGE boys&rsquo; brash proclamations.
True, one month&rsquo;s figures might not have been enough to move the bond market by themselves. Which brings us to the second thing that happened yesterday&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Trump Tax Cuts 2.0
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The second thing that happened is that congressional Republicans released their big tax bill.
As we mention now and then, the 2017 Trump tax cuts expire at the end of this year. Everyone returns to Obama-era rates if Congress doesn&rsquo;t act.
This bill would not only extend current rates &mdash; it would also include some additional targeted tax relief. For starters, the bill would raise the $10,000 cap on the SALT deduction for state and local taxes to $30,000. And in many instances, taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security benefits would end.
Desirable as those measures are, they&rsquo;ll dig Uncle Sam&rsquo;s fiscal hole even deeper. What do congressional Republicans intend to do to compensate?
Well, they don&rsquo;t want to jack up the top rate on incomes of $2.5 million or more from 37% to 39.6%. And they also don&rsquo;t want to do away with the &ldquo;carried interest loophole&rdquo; used by private equity managers. Both of those ideas had Trump&rsquo;s either tacit or explicit endorsement.
Instead, the bill&rsquo;s architects decided to use the tax code to wage the culture wars &mdash; scrapping many tax breaks for electric vehicles and &ldquo;clean&rdquo; energy production, while looking to sharply raise the taxes paid by university endowments on their investment income.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> But the real kicker to the bill is that it raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.
As a reminder, the debt ceiling has been in effect since Jan. 2 of this year. To stay under the $36.2 trillion ceiling, the Treasury has been resorting to &ldquo;extraordinary measures&rdquo; such borrowing against government pension funds.
&ldquo;Including the debt ceiling in the broader bill will allow Republicans to avoid Democratic demands for concessions in exchange for their votes to raise the debt limit,&rdquo; reports The Hill.
&ldquo;But tacking debt limit action onto the same vehicle they&rsquo;re using for Trump&rsquo;s tax plans could also put a tight time crunch on Republicans to pass the sweeping tax bill.&rdquo;
Indeed, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says his people will run out of accounting tricks by August &mdash; which means Congress needs to do something before its August recess.
Right now, that seems like a tall order: Blue-state Republicans are likely to hold out for a bigger cap to the SALT deduction. Deficit hawks, meanwhile, want far deeper spending cuts than anything currently on the table.
Recall that the Republican majority in the House is razor-thin. And while Speaker Mike Johnson has exercised an iron discipline over his fractious caucus so far, the legislation will be his biggest challenge yet.
If he can&rsquo;t pull it off&hellip; and if the U.S. government actively defaults on the national debt&hellip;
Well, that&rsquo;s why the bond market is freaking out anew. Stay tuned&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Inflation: As Good as It Gets
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The official inflation numbers are the tamest in over four years.
The Labor Department is out with the April consumer price index. It registered a 0.2% month-over-month increase, which works out to a year-over-year inflation rate of 2.3%. That&rsquo;s the lowest since inflation started taking off in earnest in March 2021 (peaking over 9% in June 2022).
As always, these numbers likely bear no resemblance to your own cost of living.
It helped that energy prices fell 3.7% compared with a year earlier. But you were in a world of hurt last month if you needed your car fixed (up 5.6% year-over-year) or your auto insurance came due (up 6.4%) or you went to a ballgame or other sporting event (up 9.3%).
This month&rsquo;s numbers are probably as good as it gets. As we&rsquo;ve chronicled for a while now, once inflation sails past 5%, <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/declare-your-independence-from-inflation">it typically takes a decade to get back to &ldquo;normal&rdquo; 2% levels</a>.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Whether it&rsquo;s the inflation numbers or something else, Wall Street is adding to yesterday&rsquo;s big gains driven by the trade-war truce.
At last check the S&amp;P 500 is up nearly 0.9% and only four points away from 5,900. The Nasdaq is up 1.5% and back above 19,000 for the first time since late February. The Dow is slightly in the red.
Precious metals are catching their breath after yesterday&rsquo;s beat-down, gold at $3,247 and silver at $32.88. (Silver is quietly outperforming gold in recent days. Hmmm&hellip;) Crude is up big again, over 2.2% to $63.33, the highest in over two weeks.
Bitcoin is hanging tough at $103,642.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> If small-business owners were worried last month about tariffs, you wouldn&rsquo;t know it from the go-to source of small-business sentiment data.
The National Federation of Independent Business is out with its monthly Optimism Index, the result of a survey conducted during April.
The headline number fell 1.6 points to 95.8, the weakest since Donald Trump&rsquo;s election last fall.
But contrary to what you might expect, uncertainty among survey respondents eased relative to previous months; the uncertainty index in April was no worse than it was last August.
As for the part of the survey where business owners are asked to identify their single most important problem, it seems good help is still hard to find &mdash; &ldquo;quality of labor&rdquo; was cited by 19%.
But for the first time in what seems like forever, inflation does not rank in the top two on this portion of the survey. Taxes are in second place, cited by 16%, followed by inflation at 14%. &ldquo;Cost/availability of insurance&rdquo; is creeping higher, now cited by 10%.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4yt9tZ4HkZ6C9OHFPZRAr2/f8a28dbee4ff0b27729caae6a4e24365/Apocalypse.png" alt="Apocalypse" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Readers Stand up for Tax Incentives
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Because you never know what might get readers&rsquo; dander up&hellip; we were a bit surprised at the pushback to Saturday&rsquo;s edition hitting out at the tax incentives for a new Microsoft data center in northwest Indiana.
&ldquo;I always appreciate your contributions, but Saturday&rsquo;s headline flashed red because La Porte is very nearby and I know and work with the consultants responsible for the transaction described in your article. And as a business/real estate transactional attorney, I&rsquo;m involved in data center transactions for sellers, buyers and developers.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not suggesting that you shouldn&rsquo;t provide a sensational headline to garner eyes, but would suggest that your article is missing several key components when looking at the larger landscape. One notable factor is that data center companies are not at all enthralled and trying to push back on the power supply regimen being adopted by Northern Indiana Public Service Co. &mdash; under which the power-generating stations for data centers will be separately funded by the data center users, which will pay commercial rates negotiated by NIPSCO on a user-by-user basis.
&ldquo;And while I don&rsquo;t know all of the specific detail of the public financing component, I did see some early outline of the underlying structure and understand how it will benefit the community, particularly since this data center will be developed upon land that would have nowhere near the tax-generating revenue this project would provide.
&ldquo;In any event, this is good public discourse, but would suggest terms such as &lsquo;scam&rsquo; and &lsquo;holding the bag&rsquo; and portraying individuals I happen to know and respect as &lsquo;tripping over themselves to hand out incentives&rsquo; are off the mark. That said, I&rsquo;m not in your business, just a person looking to rely upon and benefit from the collective intelligence and experience of the Paradigm Group to make good decisions.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Another reader was less kind and pushed back with what looks like the help of an AI engine.
&ldquo;It literally took me 15 seconds to find out facts, and I already knew about the huge advantages to a community when the city government negotiates a large tax credit.
<blockquote>Allowing a 30% tax credit for new businesses and industries can have several positive financial effects on a city government:</blockquote>
<blockquote>Increased Economic Activity: New businesses can boost local spending, leading to higher sales tax revenues.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Job Creation: More businesses typically mean more jobs, reducing unemployment and increasing income tax collections (if applicable).</blockquote>
<blockquote>Property Value Growth: New industries can raise property values, leading to higher property tax revenues.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Long-Term Tax Base Expansion: While initial tax credits reduce revenue, the growth in businesses and population can significantly expand the tax base over time.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Attracting Complementary Businesses: New industries often attract suppliers and related businesses, further boosting economic growth.</blockquote>
<blockquote>These benefits can outweigh the short-term revenue losses from the tax credits if the strategy successfully stimulates sustained economic development.&rsquo;</blockquote>
&ldquo;This has been going on for decades! And it&rsquo;s turned around and launched numerous cities into their next generation of prosperity!
&ldquo;Atlanta did it with the film Industry!
&ldquo;La Porte is a tiny depressed town. This will rocket their city into a prosperous future!
&ldquo;You people are idiots!&rdquo;
Dave responds: Because it&rsquo;s &ldquo;idiotic&rdquo; to think government has no place picking winners and losers?
As it happens, a boutique think tank called Good Jobs First is out with <a href="https://goodjobsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Cloudy-with-a-Loss-of-Spending-Control-How-Data-Centers-Are-Endangering-State-Budgets.pdf">a report</a> calling out state governments for being too eager to hand special favors to data center developers. From the executive summary&hellip;
<blockquote>At least 10 states already lose more than $100 million per year in tax revenue to data centers, the cloud-computing warehouses that were proliferating before artificial intelligence greatly accelerated their growth.</blockquote>
<blockquote>The industry&rsquo;s high-velocity growth, combined with the virtually automatic structure of the state tax exemptions, is preventing states from making accurate cost projections. For example, in the space of just 23 months, Texas revised its FY 2025 cost projection from $130 million to $1 billion. Virginia, Texas and Illinois have each recorded revenue-loss spikes of more than 1,000% in recent years.</blockquote>
<blockquote>The loss of state spending control is surely worse than we can yet document. That&rsquo;s because of the 32 states with tax incentives to data centers, 12 fail to disclose even aggregate revenue losses, much less company-specific subsidies as is common in economic development. Those 12 &ldquo;dark&rdquo; states include Indiana, North Carolina and Utah, all of which have substantial and/or growing data center investments.</blockquote>
Don&rsquo;t get us wrong. The lower corporate taxes are, the better. But those low rates should apply to everyone; trouble snowballs whenever government starts playing favorites.
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

DOGE

All is calm again in the stock market now that there’s a truce in the trade war… but the bond market is once more showing signs of stress.

DOGE Boys Disappoint

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Expect More Volatility
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />You don&rsquo;t need us to tell you the first 4&frac12; months of 2025 have had plenty of thrills-n-chills for the stock market. But&hellip;
Let&rsquo;s pause for a moment&rsquo;s perspective. Going into today&rsquo;s trade, the S&amp;P 500 stood at 5,916. For the record, that&rsquo;s&hellip;
<ul>
<li>6% higher than at the start of the year</li>
<li>7% lower than the record close on Feb. 19</li>
<li>7% higher than the panic low on April 8. ( Quite the bungee-cord move, right?)</li>
</ul>
So the coast is clear, right? Up, up and away&hellip;
Well, hold on. If it&rsquo;s tariffs you&rsquo;re concerned about, remember that the story isn&rsquo;t over. We&rsquo;re just in the middle of a couple 90-day pauses. Absent any agreements, the &ldquo;reciprocal&rdquo; tariffs still kick in on July 9 and the tariffs targeting China return to their previous levels on Aug. 12.
But forget about tariffs. Paradigm chart hound Greg Guenthner certainly has. He&rsquo;s just watching the price action for cues &mdash; mindful of market history.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;As much as I would love to put the bear market behind us, so far the price swings pale in comparison to the last major sell-offs in 2020 and 2022,&rdquo; Greg wrote his Trading Desk readers yesterday.
&ldquo;The once-in-a-lifetime COVID pandemic aside, volatility expands toward peak selling pressure and then collapses as the market recovers.&rdquo;
Case in point: &ldquo;The Consumer Discretionary ETF (XLY)&rsquo;s three-day rate of change is on par with spring 2022 &mdash; the early innings of the bear market.
&ldquo;I expect more explosive moves in both directions if stocks are truly posting a COVID-esque V-bottom or if this is an honest-to-goodness bear market.&rdquo;
Either way, Greg expects the May rally to lose some of its oomph.
&ldquo;When it does, we&rsquo;re tracking 5,700 in the S&amp;P 500,&rdquo; he says. (Again, the S&amp;P ended yesterday at 5,916).
&ldquo;A break below that key level increases the likelihood of revisiting last month&rsquo;s low. But if we don&rsquo;t see those lows anytime soon, perhaps the 20% correction wasn&rsquo;t a bear market in the first place. Instead, it could&rsquo;ve just been a temper tantrum.&rdquo;

<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The good thing about following Greg&rsquo;s research is that you don&rsquo;t have to think about the major averages and where they&rsquo;re going. 
Amid all of the market&rsquo;s springtime turbulence, Greg&rsquo;s Trading Desk readers have closed out 10 trades since the beginning of March. The average gain &mdash; 50%. (Yes, that includes the losers.)
Some of those gains came in as little as four days. The longest any of them took to materialize was six weeks.
And that&rsquo;s not just a lucky streak. Over a two-year span, Greg&rsquo;s approach had the power to grow a $40,000 model portfolio to $266,000.
It&rsquo;s one of the most successful strategies I&rsquo;ve seen during my 18 years in financial publishing. And it&rsquo;s time that you take advantage. <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2442024">Check out this invitation from our customer service director to learn how you can be added to Greg&rsquo;s alert list this coming Monday</a>.

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Gold Is a Vote of &ldquo;No Confidence&rdquo; in Congress
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Gold is getting another beat-down today, but celebrity investor David Einhorn is all-in on the Midas metal.
&ldquo;Gold is ultimately about confidence &mdash; or the lack of it &mdash; in U.S. fiscal and monetary policy,&rdquo; he tells CNBC. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a bipartisan agreement to do nothing about the deficit until we actually get to the next crisis.&rdquo;
Einhorn, founder and president of the hedge fund Greenlight Capital was speaking at the Sohn Investment Conference in New York on Wednesday. Greenlight&rsquo;s portfolio grew 8.2% during the first quarter, compared with a loss of over 4% in the S&amp;P 500. A meaningful gold position certainly helped.
At the same time Einhorn spoke on Wednesday, Congress was reinforcing his critique. &hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2YymVRSE5vBGBlJny0YJzE/4671d346a3289443810b9949b308f252/ThomasTweet0516.png" alt="thomas tweet" width="540px" />
It shouldn&rsquo;t be hard, right? But apparently the agenda is to <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/doge-boys-disappoint#2">extend the Trump tax cuts and raise the debt ceiling first</a>&hellip; then get around to passing a budget that hypothetically will include the spending cuts recommended by the &ldquo;Department of Government Efficiency.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/793dU82ZS5VDQ7vICrXzgB/e9b6110aa1bc47bbb255f64c561d9005/SpencerTweet.png" alt="spencer" width="540px" />
It&rsquo;s the sort of news that should send gold substantially higher &mdash; except for the fact that gold made a too-far-too-fast run past $3,500 last month. This morning the bid is down $64 to $3,175.
<blockquote>➢ One more gold tidbit: Also on Wednesday Costco clamped down on purchases of its one-ounce gold bars. It used to be limit two bars per transaction. Now it&rsquo;s only one bar, and no more than two transactions in 24 hours.</blockquote>
Meanwhile, those congressional follies are as strong an explanation as any for the sell-off in the bond market this week &mdash; pushing prices lower and yields higher. On Wednesday the yield on a 10-year Treasury note surpassed 4.5% &mdash; even higher than during <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-real-reason-for-the-tariff-pause">the bond market freakout last month</a>.
But as we write, Republican spending hawks in the House Budget Committee just sent the tax-cuts-and-debt-ceiling bill down in flames. Five Republicans voted against the bill for a final vote of 16 yea and 21 nay. On the theory that Uncle Sam might actually get his fiscal house in order, the 10-year yield is down to 4.43%.
The action in the stock market as the week winds down is like watching paint dry, with none of the major averages moving more than a tenth of a percent.
Crude is set to end an extremely volatile week a little over $62. Bitcoin has hoisted itself back over $104,000 for the moment.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Lights Out
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> It being mid-May, it&rsquo;s time for our annual warning about rolling blackouts in case of an extra-hot summer.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation is out with its annual &ldquo;Summer Reliability Assessment.&rdquo;
The picture isn&rsquo;t dire &mdash; but it&rsquo;s concerning for a wide swath of middle America. Here&rsquo;s a map we nicked from NERC&rsquo;s report&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1a2stZIIJz7hsN3SESd8rU/b475fe0ceb657a873270dcfba133b507/image__102_.png" alt="map" width="540px" />
As always, folks in the Upper Midwest and Mississippi Valley served by the MISO interconnection &mdash; including your editor &mdash; are at elevated risk of the lights going out under extreme circumstances.
Texas and New England are also still at risk. And this year we&rsquo;re joined by folks in the Great Plains, But on the plus side of the ledger, the desert Southwest is in better shape compared with last year.
(Curiously, PJM &mdash; the biggest regional grid operator serving folks from New Jersey west to Illinois &mdash; gets a clean bill of health even though PJM itself is raising the alarm, as we chronicled <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/summer-2025-maxed-out">in Wednesday&rsquo;s edition</a>.)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;Power demand is sharply up since last summer,&rdquo; says a Washington Post summary of the NERC report, &ldquo;increasing at more than double the rate it did between 2023 and 2024.&rdquo;
If you&rsquo;ve been keeping up with these daily dispatches, you know why: AI is <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-monster-that-ate-the-power-grid-ai">the monster that ate the power grid</a>.
In addition, NERC&rsquo;s report once again acknowledges that aging coal and natural gas power plants are being retired faster than renewables are coming online &mdash; and renewables have reliability issues that even the WaPo is willing to acknowledge.
&ldquo;Large amounts of wind and solar power have been added to the grid in the last year, and their inability to feed energy around-the-clock to the aging power network can destabilize it,&rdquo; says the article. &ldquo;While a vast expansion of industrial-size batteries to store that energy is helping, there is not yet enough storage to solve the problem.&rdquo;
Yeah, and there never will be barring some sort of technological breakthrough.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Money alone can&rsquo;t solve the reliability problem &mdash; as the NERC report notes.
It warns there&rsquo;s a shortage of &ldquo;parts, materials and skilled technicians&rdquo; that&rsquo;s holding up maintenance of existing transformers and installation of new ones.
This shortage was a hot topic at the annual CERAWeek energy conference in Houston earlier this spring. Energy journalist Robert Bryce was in attendance and asked one knowledgeable participant what could slow the necessary build-out.
Her answer: &ldquo;Turbines, transformers and people.&rdquo;
&ldquo;There's a lack of gas-fired turbines, there's a lack of high-powered transformers, and the labor cost and the labor availability is a key pinch point,&rdquo; Bryce tells the Financial Sense podcast.
&ldquo;So we can talk about tens of gigawatts of new potential electricity demand, but if we don't have the turbines, transformers and the people to build the capacity, well, that simply won't be realized. That capacity, that new electricity availability, just simply won't be there.&rdquo;
Among the Paradigm analysts, our trading pro Enrique Abeyta has been front and center with investing opportunities in this space &mdash; especially the &ldquo;independent power producers&rdquo; that aren&rsquo;t regulated utilities. <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2442031">Nor is that the only theme on his radar in his entry-level newsletter </a><a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2442031">Breaking Profits</a>.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />OK, is this just someone having fun with Photoshop? Or is this what lawsuit prevention in the 2020s really looks like?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4Yqz0n3XtHtt1nGF1L7auk/5ea53d80ce74a69344a25a2d46e3f057/Fire.png" alt="fire" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Cynicism
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />I wasn&rsquo;t really sure what sort of reaction I&rsquo;d get to yesterday&rsquo;s edition &mdash; aka, <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/9-11-the-financial-crisis-and-covid">&ldquo;the cynicism issue.&rdquo;</a>
But it filled over nine pages of a Word document and everyone who wrote in was gracious. Perhaps I managed to articulate something that for many of these readers existed only on a subconscious level until now. A few highlights&hellip;
&ldquo;Until your column yesterday,&rdquo; wrote one, &ldquo;I was in the &lsquo;Geesh, He&rsquo;s So Cynical!&rsquo; camp, but you&rsquo;ve changed my mind. Thank you for the thoughtful contribution, and I look forward to many more. You don&rsquo;t need my permission to write freely and let the chips fall where they may, but feel free to do so anyway!&rdquo;
&ldquo;Are you too cynical?&rdquo; another reader begins. &ldquo; Life makes you more cynical and I do not believe you are &lsquo;over the edge.&rsquo; Always appreciate your perspective, even if it is not similar to mine. Makes the world go round.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Just want you to know, I look forward to receiving The 5 every day,&rdquo; writes a longtimer. &ldquo;I always find it thought-provoking. I don't always agree with you; however, I respect your point of view. I believe that discourse and dialog are dying in this country and that is too bad. To me, one of the beautiful parts of life is the diversity of people. I prefer to be curious about people in general and enjoy the process of interacting. You never know what you might learn and that your current position on a subject might be wrong. Keep up the good work.&rdquo;
On the flip side: &ldquo;Dave, this is the first I've read your writings in 5 Bullets, and I did not find any cynicism, only reality. If you are a cynic, I'm totally over the cliff.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;It's true, you may be a cynic. But this raw, honest explanation of how you came to be that way is refreshing,&rdquo; writes our final correspondent.
&ldquo;But the end &mdash; you want to help people &mdash; is perhaps more important than the things which turned you cynical. Seeing, and understanding, the dark underbellies of politics and journalism is enough to bring out the cynic in anyone. The reader that claims that your cynicism has taken a toll on their soul &mdash; maybe, but I hope that the outlet of expressing it in The 5 helps to keep it from doing the same to yourself.
&ldquo;Personally I hope you never change your delivery. The very things that have made you cynical provide historical perspective, as it relates to current conditions. IMO that is critically important, and invaluable. I may not always agree with your conclusions (I do more often than not) but if I don't, at least I can tell how you got there.
&ldquo;A single issue to explain your cynicism seems a bit much. While appreciated by many (myself included) I'm sure it most likely wasn't necessary. I'm willing to bet that many more of your readers appreciate your take on current events, with the healthy dose of cynicism that take is accompanied by, than are turned off by it.
&ldquo;When markets, or headlines, make no sense, I find myself waiting to react until I read The 5 for that day. Your column often provides insights that I (and others) hadn't considered, and in my case at least probably wouldn't have. I respect and appreciate you, and I am quite sure that sentiment is shared among the majority of your readers.&rdquo;
Dave: Thanks to everyone who took the time to write. Means a lot. Keeps me going.
Have a good weekend,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

shutterstock 362808566 copy

You don’t need us to tell you that the first months of 2025 have had plenty of thrills-n-chills for the stock market. But… 

Bungee Market 

Saudi-oil

Every so often, a story comes along that makes even Donald Trump’s most passionate partisans squirm a bit.

Trump’s Deals in the Desert

5 bullets hero Flames burning home during the destroyed homes and the American Flag

shutterstock 1226394439

Democrats’ tariff lawsuits can be written off as partisan hackery. The lawsuits from small businesses, not so much.

Unconstitutional

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Great Minds and Gold
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />We&rsquo;ll file this one under &ldquo;Great minds think alike.&rdquo;
Hedge fund legend John Paulson expects gold to reach nearly $5,000 an ounce before the Trump 47 presidency is over. (Checking our screens this morning, it&rsquo;s about $3,350.)
Paulson is best known for having the foresight to short sell subprime mortgages before the housing and credit markets blew up in 2007&ndash;08. More recently, he was under consideration for Treasury secretary in the current administration.
As for $5k gold, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a well-informed prediction. I think that&rsquo;s a reasonable number,&rdquo; Paulson tells the Reuters newswire.
"As central banks and people look to put their money in a more stable source... I think gold will increase its position in the world.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Paulson knows what our own Jim Rickards has been saying for over three years. The Biden administration freezing the dollar-based assets of Russia&rsquo;s central bank changed the game forever.
"When the war started, [Russia] kept their physical gold, that was safe, but all their cash &mdash; the paper reserves &mdash; was confiscated," says Paulson.
"So that caused other central banks to wake up and say ... 'What happens if there's a conflict with the U.S.? Could the U.S. keep our Treasuries, and all our savings would disappear?'"
The result is as clear as can be on this chart: Central bank gold buying set a record in 2022&hellip; and the furious pace of buying continued in 2023&ndash;24.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1MraYzoLun36mzjjCktATb/538beabe9d4d893157925667f34ab426/FMF_5Bullets_Central_Gold_Chart.png" alt="off the charts" width="540px" />
&ldquo;Central banks, predominantly from developing markets, moved from being net sellers to net buyers of gold in 2010,&rdquo; says Jim Rickards, elaborating on the trend.
&ldquo;The top buyers were the central banks of Russia, China, Turkey, Poland and India.&rdquo;
Russia&rsquo;s gold reserve, relative to the size of its economy, is the biggest in the world. And China&rsquo;s is likely much higher than Beijing publicly discloses.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> So global demand for gold is rising at the same time global supply is tightening. As always, the law of supply and demand is doing its thing.
&ldquo;Global mining output of gold was about 130 million ounces in 2018 and was about 120 million ounces in 2024,&rdquo; Jim says. &ldquo;Output declined slowly from 2018&ndash;2022 and then recovered slowly over the course of 2023 and 2024 but the change in both directions was slight.
&ldquo;Gold production is projected to grow slightly from today until 2030 but is still not projected to exceed the 2018 high. In short, gold production by miners is flat.
&ldquo;This does not mean that we are at &lsquo;peak gold&rsquo; or that new discoveries are not being made. They are. What it means is that gold is becoming harder to find and costs of production (especially water and energy) are going up so the total output trend is flat. Of course, Newmont itself can beat this trend by buying junior miners and increasing its corporate output even as global output is flat.
&ldquo;Continually increasing demand with flat output is a recipe for higher gold prices.&rdquo;
Jim is on record with an outlier projection of gold topping $27,000, based on a calculation of U.S. money supply and a hypothetical 40% gold backing of the U.S. dollar (as was the case between 1913&ndash;1946.)
Absent that eventuality, Jim is on board with Paulson&rsquo;s outlook. As he wrote his Strategic Intelligence readers last fall, &ldquo;I expect gold prices (measured as dollars per ounce) to gain substantially over the next five years, perhaps to $5,000 per ounce or higher.&rdquo;

[Editor&rsquo;s note:&nbsp;You have an unclaimed package from Jim Rickards: It&rsquo;s valued at $400 and waiting for you&hellip; but supplies are limited and may soon run out.
To secure your package &mdash; an assortment of items Jim has hand-selected to protect you from the all-out financial trade war &mdash; <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2439142">watch this short video message for instructions.</a>]

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Markets Today: The First Deal
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />We&rsquo;re back to a &ldquo;headline-driven&rdquo; market &mdash; and stocks are rallying modestly on news of the Trump administration&rsquo;s first trade deal with another country since the April 9 pause on so-called reciprocal tariffs.
As we write, we&rsquo;re awaiting details of an agreement with the United Kingdom. The S&amp;P 500 is up a half percent to 5,661 &mdash; close to where it was just before the &ldquo;Liberation Day&rdquo; announcement on April 2. The Dow is also up a half percent, the Nasdaq three-quarters of a percent.
That&rsquo;s not a huge rally given the amount of anticipation for a deal of some sort. Perhaps that&rsquo;s because the deal is with the U.K. &mdash; America&rsquo;s No. 8 trading partner and a country with which America has a trade surplus.
British leaders have been eager, nay desperate, to cut a trade deal with Washington ever since British voters approved &ldquo;Brexit&rdquo; &mdash; the U.K.&rsquo;s departure from the European Union &mdash; in 2016. A deal with the U.K. was always going to be among the easiest to reach.
Yesterday&rsquo;s modest rally can likewise be chalked up to trade news: U.S. and Chinese negotiators will meet this weekend in Switzerland.
The announcement from Beijing said it was Washington that made the first overture &mdash; and no one in the Trump administration has publicly pushed back on that claim.
Meanwhile, absent a deal with China, we see the supply chain snags are finally getting some mainstream attention&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3pnyDshTeP5sh7N2j5fkO0/8c6a43358e1326f294854654b534fbd6/Kaitlan.png" alt="kaitlan tweet" width="540px" />
&hellip; even as the administration&rsquo;s critics are upping their meme game.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/78uT2IXKgPqayP0b6UwSZn/01103697659838dab5d9b436a7a6326f/Doll.png" alt="doll meme" width="540px" />
Meanwhile, in a development that surprised no one, the Federal Reserve left short-term interest rates alone yesterday. Equally unsurprising was Fed chair Jerome Powell saying, &ldquo;If the large increases in tariffs that have been announced are sustained, they&rsquo;re likely to generate a rise in inflation, a slowdown in economic growth and an increase in unemployment.&rdquo;
Elsewhere, Bitcoin is flirting with six figures again. The flagship crypto is fetching $99,570 at last check &mdash; a three-month high.
As noted above, gold is hanging tough at a little over $3,350. Silver&rsquo;s in the green at $32.67. Crude is up over $1.50 to $59.62, the highest so far in May.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Scrambled Shipping, Middle East Edition
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Don&rsquo;t expect normal shipping through the Red Sea to resume anytime soon.
As you might have heard, the Trump administration has reached a truce of sorts with the Houthi faction of Yemen.
At various times over the last 19 months, the Houthis have been harassing U.S.- and Israeli-linked shipping through a narrow waterway off Yemen called the Bab-el-Mendab &mdash; an act of solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza.
The Houthis called off their attacks earlier this year when Trump&rsquo;s envoys brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas&hellip; but when the ceasefire fell apart, the Houthis resumed their attacks, including attacks on U.S. warships and other military hardware.
For a group widely advertised as a &ldquo;ragtag&rdquo; outfit, the Houthis have achieved impressive results &mdash; forcing much shipping between Europe and Asia to take the long route around Africa.
And they&rsquo;ve inflicted major losses on the U.S. military &mdash; more than 20 MQ-9 Reaper drones at a cost of over $30 million each.
Last month, incoming Houthi missiles forced evasive maneuvers on the part of the aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman &mdash; sending an F/A-18 fighter jet sliding off the deck and into the drink.
Shortly after word of the U.S.-Houthi truce on Tuesday, word came that another F/A-18 aboard the Truman was lost to the Red Sea.
Was that incident Trump&rsquo;s last straw? Or did someone remind him he was against this war before he was for it?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/15CKQK4YZmqxCX3j4fbUuk/e22b80217771336473034bfc719380c5/GlennTweet.png" alt="glenn tweet" width="540px" />
In any event, Israel is not a party to this truce. A senior Houthi official tells the Reuters newswire that attacks on Israel and the blockade on Israeli shipping will continue until there&rsquo;s a ceasefire in Gaza.
So far there&rsquo;s no announcement from Maersk or any of the other big shipping lines that they&rsquo;ll resume transiting the Red Sea. And we&rsquo;re not holding our breath.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />In a related Middle East development: Reuters reports that Team Trump is mulling over a plan for a U.S. administration of Gaza whenever Israel&rsquo;s siege campaign is over.
The newswire cites five anonymous sources who &ldquo;compared the proposal to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq that Washington established in 2003, shortly after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.&rdquo;
Because that worked out so well, right?
In any event, it seems Trump still hasn&rsquo;t let go of his desire to &ldquo;take over&rdquo; Gaza, even if such a scheme is <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/9-11-x-10">the direct opposite of an &ldquo;America first&rdquo; agenda</a>.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Economic Oddity
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> We present the following with no further comment&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1Xa4TQvmOmpWXogLW7U9mc/4ed60a363c653f5acd23956400a569a2/CNBC.png" alt="cnbc" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Intel, Blackout Nation, SOMA
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;No analyst in financial newsletters is neutral on Intel,&rdquo; a reader writes after James Altucher stated the bullish case <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/high-na-euv">in Tuesday&rsquo;s edition</a>. &ldquo;Most are quite negative. 
&ldquo;For every cheerleader such as James Altucher, there are easily three&ndash;four who say, &lsquo;Intel is past its sell date,&rsquo; or &lsquo;Leave for dead,&rsquo; or &lsquo;There are better plays in semiconductors.&rsquo; Typically the naysayers are short on specifics but strong on the rehashes I have read ever since the stock sunk to $20.
&ldquo;James provides two solid reasons for a potential Intel inflection that I have not read about elsewhere, namely the 18A chip and a possible partnership with Taiwan Semiconductor. So thank you, James. I am paying attention.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;I'm concerned about those windmills and solar panels replacing half of our coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants. We're becoming too dependent on the weather,&rdquo; a reader writes after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/blackout-nation">yesterday&rsquo;s &ldquo;Blackout Nation&rdquo; edition</a>.
In early 2021, Texas suffered a major blackout &mdash; its power grid failed when a blizzard hit the state. A foot of snow covered those solar panels, blocking off all sunlight; the windmills all froze; and the (fossil-fueled) backup system failed because it couldn't handle the sudden demand.
&ldquo;Those windmills are or were killing the whales at the Jersey Shore. I hear the Green New Scam is in full swing in New Jersey &mdash; &lsquo;100% green energy&rsquo; &mdash; which might explain the power failure the other night and the next day. God help us if America suffers a blackout like the one that hit Spain and Portugal.&rdquo;
Dave responds: We share your concern. Your editor bought a generator for essential loads in mid-2022 after the regional grid operator in my neck of the woods warned of rolling blackouts in the event of extreme summer heat.
We&rsquo;ve been spotlighting the fragility of the grid in these pages ever since &mdash; even more once it became apparent that AI would become <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-monster-that-ate-the-power-grid-ai">&ldquo;the monster that ate the grid.&rdquo;</a>
Here&rsquo;s a startling new stat I encountered just today, courtesy of the energy journalist Robert Bryce: According to S&amp;P Global, U.S. electricity demand will grow 25% by 2030. The only possible way to meet that demand is with crash construction of natural gas-fired plants.
Rest assured we&rsquo;ll stay on top of the story &mdash; both the resilience-of-the-grid angle as well as the companies and sectors best positioned to meet that demand and deliver their investors outsized gains.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;The Fed&rsquo;s Unintended Comedy&rdquo; reads the subject line of our final reader email today.
&ldquo;Sean Ring's recognition that the Fed program of bond buying is labeled SOMA. Recall that in the book Brave New World, they use a happiness-inducing drug called soma to placate the population.
&ldquo;Ironically, the Fed's program with an acronym of SOMA (among many others) is being used to placate the current system. As DOGE found out, all fiscal spending is absolutely critical (at least to those who receive it). So the population screams at any attempt to rein in spending as we blissfully race toward the fiscal cliff.&rdquo;
Dave: Yeah, and it&rsquo;s not as if either party in Congress is going to do anything about it&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3VcW2hlv1YAIdFPf44ynn9/4b02ddc07b53740e9bf62d8d2e5c47cc/ThomasTweet.png" alt="Thomas Tweet" width="540px" />
It would be nice if we had a press in this country that served its watchdog function and tried to hold House Speaker Mike Johnson to account, but clearly that&rsquo;s too much to ask&hellip;
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

video-game-gold

Hedge fund legend John Paulson expects gold to reach nearly $5,000 an ounce before the Trump 47 presidency is over.

Supply + Demand = $5K

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />U.S. Energy&rsquo;s March Milestone
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The U.S. reached a historic energy milestone: For the first time, renewable sources generated over 50% of the nation&rsquo;s electricity in the month of March, surpassing fossil fuels which accounted for 49.2% &mdash; the lowest share ever recorded.&nbsp;
This milestone was driven largely by rapid growth in solar and wind power, with solar output increasing 37% and wind 12% compared to March 2024.
But before celebrating, it&rsquo;s worth stepping back and asking: What does this shift really mean for Americans who rely on stable, affordable power?
Unlike coal or natural gas plants that provide steady &ldquo;baseload&rdquo; power, solar and wind are intermittent. They depend on weather conditions and can&rsquo;t quickly ramp up output to meet sudden changes in demand.
This limitation was starkly illustrated last month when Spain and Portugal, where renewables supply over 70% of electricity, experienced a major blackout.
The outage, in fact, was triggered by a sudden drop in renewable power generation combined with the temporary shutdown of nuclear and natural gas plants that normally stabilize the grid.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />As renewables dominate more of the grid, the risk of failure grows &mdash; without adequate backup systems. 
Congress is responding with bipartisan legislation, including the Preventing Power Outages Act, which would fund upgrades to grid infrastructure, especially in states with less reliable electricity service.
For instance, in Texas alone, power demand is expected to more than double by 2031, driven partly by high-energy consumers like AI data centers.
To meet its own growing AI energy demand, Elementl Power and Google announced a partnership this morning, with Google committing early-stage funding for three planned nuclear sites.
&ldquo;Google will have the option to buy the power once the sites are up and running,&rdquo; says CNBC. &ldquo;Each site will generate at least 600 megawatts of power capacity.&rdquo;
(To put that number in perspective, that&rsquo;s enough capacity to supply electricity to around 300,000&ndash;480,000 average U.S. homes annually.)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />So while renewable energy surpassed fossil fuels in U.S. electricity generation in March, the intermittent nature of solar and wind highlights the need for reliable baseload power, including from sources like nuclear energy. At present, nuclear energy remains a critical energy backbone, providing about 20% of U.S. electricity.
Among Paradigm analysts, our trading pro Enrique Abeyta has been out front spotting profit opportunities in this intersection of AI and power demand. We&rsquo;ll reserve names and tickers for his paying subscribers &mdash; but one name for your consideration today is Constellation Energy (CEG).
A leader in nuclear power, CEG operates in the lucrative field of &ldquo;independent power producers&rdquo; that aren&rsquo;t regulated utilities. And earlier this year, readers of The Maverick bagged 11% gains on CEG in only nine days. Enrique is on the lookout for an attractive entry point to jump back in.
As for Q1 2025, CEG announced strong results &mdash; reporting adjusted operating earnings of $2.14 per share, a 17.6% increase year-over-year. And the company affirmed full-year EPS forward guidance between $8.9 and $9.6.
Strategic moves in nuclear plant upgrades as well as the acquisition of Calpine &mdash; America&rsquo;s largest producer of electricity from natural gas and geothermal energy &mdash; position CEG to meet rising energy demand, from AI data centers and beyond.&nbsp;
For investors seeking exposure to a company at the forefront of reliable power, with solid financial momentum, CEG offers compelling potential.
As for the March energy milestone, it&rsquo;s not a signal to abandon fossil fuels entirely. Instead, it&rsquo;s a vital reminder that America&rsquo;s future energy generation will come from a complex blend of sources &mdash; to ensure reliable, affordable power.
It&rsquo;s a story with a long arc. We&rsquo;ve been on it since early 2024 and it still hasn&rsquo;t reached mainstream awareness. We&rsquo;ll stay with it here in these 5 Bullets.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Oil&rsquo;s Price Plunge
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The recent swoon in oil prices reflects the bearish interplay of ample supply and subdued demand amid a sluggish global backdrop. Byron King, Paradigm&rsquo;s expert geologist and self-described &ldquo;rock kicker,&rdquo; underscores how oil demand has not rebounded as robustly as expected since the pandemic.
This is largely due to a global-scale recession and stagflation &mdash; inflation coupled with stagnant growth &mdash; rooted in pandemic shutdowns and expansive federal spending under the Biden administration.
Byron further points out that low oil prices benefit many sectors, including transportation, mining and agriculture. But these low prices pose a serious threat to oil companies &mdash; which will curtail future drilling and capital investment.
Byron reminds that extracting oil is costly and technically challenging, especially when it comes to fracking, which accounts for over 70% of U.S. oil production. With oil priced below $60 per barrel, many operations barely break even! So a steady price decline risks reducing output, particularly in key regions like the Texas Permian Basin.
Adding to this bearish outlook, OPEC+ has increased production beyond quotas, driven by member countries&rsquo; need for revenue despite lower prices.
Simultaneously, U.S. tariffs and retaliatory trade tensions have dampened economic growth prospects, further weakening demand and pressuring prices downward.
Byron summarizes one final dilemma: Political leaders love low fuel prices&hellip; Yet such low prices undermine the economics of oil production. &ldquo;Politicians can&rsquo;t have it both ways,&rdquo; he adds, highlighting the tension between cheap energy versus sustainable supply.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The price of oil is sliding again today: down 1.20% to $58.35 for a barrel of West Texas Intermediate. As for precious metals, gold is down 1% to $3,387.40 per ounce. (More on the price of gold in a moment.) Silver, in the meantime, is down 1.70% to $32.80.
But the U.S. stock market is in the green &mdash; at least two out of three major stock indexes ain&rsquo;t bad. The outlier? The tech-heavy Nasdaq is down 0.40% to 17,610. The Dow is up 0.55% to 41,050 while the S&amp;P 500 is hanging on by a thread, up just 0.05% to 5,600.
Last, things are looking up for crypto; at the time of writing, Bitcoin is up 1.55% to $96,500, and Ethereum is up 0.85% to $1,800.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Gold and &ldquo;Stealth QE&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;If you think the Fed&rsquo;s only job is fiddling with interest rates, you&rsquo;re missing the real story,&rdquo; says editor Sean Ring at the Rude Awakening this morning. Most notably, Sean points to the price of gold &mdash; which leapt $100 yesterday! 
Mainstream outlet Reuters chalks up gold&rsquo;s massive one-day rally to &ldquo;post-holiday buying from China and concerns over potential U.S. tariffs on pharmaceutical imports.&rdquo;
But Sean has the real story: It&rsquo;s all about the Fed&rsquo;s biggest one-day purchase of U.S. Treasury debt since 2021.
&ldquo;The Fed bought over $20 billion in bonds,&rdquo; he emphasizes. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s right. Even with QT (quantitative tightening) supposedly underway, the Fed is still a net buyer of U.S. government debt.

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5Tvuw1MjIXBGuHULiOnavR/35ac75c93134816f2d8c23af43172216/TheCoastalJournal.png" alt="The Coastal Journal" width="540px" />

Source: X, @1CoastalJournal
&ldquo;And that&rsquo;s why gold rallied over $100,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re wondering how this is connected, let me explain it simply&hellip;
&ldquo;The Fed printed over $20 billion out of thin air. Then they took those freshly cut dollars and bought U.S. Treasury bonds to help shore up the bond auction.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;These bonds now sit on the Fed&rsquo;s growing balance sheet,&rdquo; Sean says. &ldquo;Investors will buy gold to counter the inflationary effects of the Fed&rsquo;s bond buying, 
&ldquo;Because the markets aren&rsquo;t as dumb as Jay Powell thinks, they bought gold because they know this is a quantitative easing move, not tightening.
&ldquo;The Fed&rsquo;s $20.4 billion purchase of these 3-year notes through the System Open Market Account (SOMA) is its largest daily bond acquisition since 2021.
&ldquo;By doing this, the Fed signaled a shift toward liquidity support amid a $47 billion Treasury auction. In other words, if the U.S. Treasury can&rsquo;t raise funds, the Fed will step in whenever needed. And that, my friend, is inflationary.
&ldquo;Following a $3.5 billion discount window injection the prior week, the Fed is quietly supporting the Treasury market, a tactic investors label as &lsquo;stealth QE&rsquo; (quantitative easing). This strategy is reminiscent of when the Fed balanced QT with unofficial liquidity boosts.&rdquo;
Sean adds: &ldquo;Jay Powell&rsquo;s press conference today will almost certainly be an irrelevance. Why? Because the Fed&rsquo;s balance sheet tells the real story.
&ldquo;Despite all the talk of unwinding, the Fed&rsquo;s emergency lending facilities &mdash; BTFP, reverse repos and assorted backdoor liquidity windows &mdash; remain active. And now, $20.4 billion in Treasury purchases shows they&rsquo;re still papering over cracks in the system.
&ldquo;This isn&rsquo;t easing by name,&rdquo; Sean concludes. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s easing by necessity.&rdquo; (To read Sean&rsquo;s masterful &mdash; and totally non-mainstream &mdash; gold explainer, you can find it <a href="https://rudeawakening.info/posts/feds-stealth-qe-pushed-gold-above-usd3-400">here</a> in its entirety.)
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Kashmir on the Brink
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The long-standing Kashmir conflict between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan has taken a dangerous turn this week, with both sides exchanging threats of war.
As journalist Eric Margolis explains, this dispute is one of the oldest in the world. Kashmir, a beautiful mountainous region, is claimed by both Islamabad and Delhi, and has been the cause of three wars and many clashes for centuries.
Since 1947, Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan, with India controlling the larger part, which is unique as a Muslim-majority state within India.
Since the 1980s, Kashmiri Muslims have fought to either join Pakistan or gain independence, leading to a heavy military presence of 500,000 Indian troops and an equal number of paramilitary police.
Most recently, we noted last week that gunmen attacked a group of Indian tourists in Kashmir in April &mdash; 26 people were killed. India&rsquo;s politicians are &ldquo;loudly demanding revenge strikes against Pakistan,&rdquo; Margolis notes, while Pakistan seeks support from China.
Meanwhile, both countries have nuclear weapons on high alert, pointed at major cities, creating a terrifying risk of nuclear war. This volatile mix, says Margolis &mdash; <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/trump-revives-clinton-scandal#3">and we would concur</a> &mdash; makes the Kashmir conflict one of the most dangerous in the world today.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Luck Be a Lady
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> A Bronx all-girls Catholic prep school was on the brink of closure&hellip; until casino giant Bally&rsquo;s swooped in with an $8.5 million rescue package. 
Bally&rsquo;s, aiming to build a casino mega-complex nearby, bought the Preston High School&rsquo;s property and is leasing it back for a mere $1 per year for 25 years. Bally&rsquo;s also pledged $1 million for school upgrades and legal fees.
Proving that saving a neighborhood school &mdash; and planning a casino &mdash; can go (awkwardly) hand in hand&hellip;

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/wyrlRIppGOkwem5LGvgnb/9b0371e3d61b49903c06677695cf94b5/CBSNews.png" alt="CBS News" width="540px" />

Source: CBS News New York, YouTube
Attorney General Letitia James brokered the deal after community uproar and a rejected initial offer. Bally&rsquo;s chairperson Soo Kim, a New Yorker at heart, insists that keeping the school open helps property values. Because nothing says &ldquo;great neighborhood&rdquo; like a thriving school&hellip; and casino.
The catch: &ldquo;Though it is currently still under the leadership of Sisters of the Divine Compassion, the deal also calls for the school to transition to independence from the Sisters,&rdquo; says an article at Gothamist.
So while the Bronx school dodges closure, it&rsquo;s now got a casino developer as a landlord&hellip; Jackpot?
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/emily-clancy.png" alt="Emily Clancy" width="250px" align="left" />
Emily Clancy Associate editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

blackout

The U.S. reached a historic energy milestone: For the first time, renewable sources generated over 50% of the nation’s electricity in the month of March. 

Blackout Nation

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Tech Turnaround Follow-Up
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Time for an update on the potential for &ldquo;one of the biggest turnarounds in tech history&rdquo; &mdash; as Paradigm&rsquo;s AI authority James Altucher billed it here in mid-March.
Back then, James was bullish about the prospects for Intel after the company named a new CEO.
The market was bullish, too &mdash; bidding up INTC&rsquo;s share price from under $20 to over $26.
Since then, INTC has sold off; as we write this morning it&rsquo;s pennies under $20 again.
The market&rsquo;s enthusiasm has waned. But James&rsquo; has not.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;What if I told you America's fallen tech champion is about to unleash a secret weapon that could reshape the entire semiconductor industry?&rdquo; he asks now.
The new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, is wasting no time making his mark. &ldquo;Tan is slashing bureaucracy across the company,&rdquo; James tells us. &ldquo;He's cutting unnecessary meetings. He's requiring employees to come into the office four days a week. He's eliminating layers of management.&rdquo;
By itself, that won&rsquo;t move the needle for the long term.
But this will&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;The real game-changer might be Intel's upcoming 18A chip manufacturing process,&rdquo; James goes on.
&ldquo;Unlike its competitors, Intel has purchased two of the most advanced chipmaking machines in the world. These &lsquo;High NA EUV&rsquo; machines cost nearly $400 million each.&rdquo;
Key point: Taiwan Semiconductor, the company that&rsquo;s left INTC in the dust for years now, hasn&rsquo;t made the same commitment yet.
&ldquo;Several customers have already expressed interest in testing Intel's 18A process,&rdquo; says James. &ldquo;High-volume production is expected to begin later this year.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s promising on its own merits, but get this: Tan recently met with leadership from Taiwan Semi. &ldquo;The companies are exploring potential collaboration opportunities,&rdquo; says James.
There were rumors before Tan came on board that the two companies were feeling each other out for opportunities to collaborate. Tan taking part in the discussions as the new CEO takes the possibility to a whole new level.
&ldquo;A partnership between these rivals,&rdquo; says James, &ldquo;would be unprecedented.
&ldquo;If Tan's strategy works, Intel could reclaim its throne in chip manufacturing. If it fails, Intel might never recover.&rdquo;
But James is sticking to the forecast he shared here in March &mdash; INTC has profit potential of 200&ndash;400% in the next three&ndash;five years.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Echoes of COVID
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />There&rsquo;s an eerie resemblance between the stock market&rsquo;s action this year and during the COVID year of 2020.
It&rsquo;s Paradigm chart hound Greg Guenthner who brought it to our attention: &ldquo;Even the setups leading into the declines mirrored each other,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;In both cases, the averages were overbought and the herd was looking for a reason to take profits.
&ldquo;Then, a big news event sent the public into a frenzy (spiking COVID cases and lockdowns vs. aggressive tariff negotiations).
&ldquo;The markets cratered, and investors experienced sharp declines lasting several weeks, followed by a recovery taking the averages back to the scene of the crime &mdash; the area where the breakdown initially accelerated.&rdquo;
To illustrate, Greg shows both drops in a single chart. This is the SPDR S&amp;P 500 Index ETF (SPY)...
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2ZfmenkGgZzo8ZD6TNbUuD/655395cf1dbea6a20ca0b09721da23f6/ttr-issue-05-02-25-img-1.png" alt="SPY Chart" />
True, the COVID crash was much steeper than the 2025 correction. But several similarities remain.
&ldquo;Five years ago,&rdquo; Greg reminds us, &ldquo;SPY snapped back to 300 and consolidated, then managed to push to new highs by late June.
&ldquo;This time around, SPY has snapped back to a similar area of resistance, this time near 550. Note how this level is also where the initial drop from the highs bounced, then failed during the correction.&rdquo;
For the moment, the market is moving on from tariff news. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re just not seeing huge price moves accompanying every single bit of tariff speculation hitting the wire.&rdquo;
Here too, there&rsquo;s a 2020 echo: Once the initial shock wore off and governments stepped in with &ldquo;stimulus,&rdquo; it was up, up and away.
If the past is prologue, &ldquo;we would see new highs before the end of the third quarter.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />For the moment, however, the market continues to take a rest after last week&rsquo;s big run-up. At last check the S&amp;P 500 is down 0.4% on the day at 5,627.
If it&rsquo;s excitement you&rsquo;re looking for, it&rsquo;s in the commodities space. For no obvious reason, oil is rebounding big-time from yesterday&rsquo;s dramatic sell-off &mdash; up nearly $2.50 as we write to $59.60.
Meanwhile, gold continues to soar &mdash; up another $61 today and only five bucks away from $3,400. And silver is keeping pace, up over 2% and back above $33.
Bitcoin continues to consolidate a little over $94,000.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The Fed Is Behind the Curve
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The Federal Reserve is adrift &mdash; for reasons that have nothing to do with Donald Trump haranguing Fed chair Jerome Powell to lower short-term interest rates.
The Fed has begun one of its periodic two-day meetings. Barring an out-of-nowhere shock, the Fed will announce at the conclusion tomorrow that the benchmark fed funds rate will remain unchanged at 4.5%. That&rsquo;s where the rate&rsquo;s been set since last December.
For the moment, the Fed is still more concerned about lingering inflation than it is about the potential for rising unemployment.
&ldquo;The Fed operates under what is called the dual mandate,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s macro maven Jim Rickards. &ldquo;This was created by the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978. This act requires the Fed to pursue policies that promote both price stability and low unemployment.
&ldquo;The idea is that if unemployment is high, it&rsquo;s expected that inflation will be low so the Fed can use &lsquo;stimulus&rsquo; in the form of rate cuts to help create jobs without having to worry about inflation. Conversely, if unemployment is low, inflation may be on the rise so the Fed could use rate hikes to cool down the inflation without having to worry about the labor market.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;The trade-off between unemployment and inflation sounds neat and tidy but it&rsquo;s nonsense,&rdquo; Jim goes on. &ldquo;There is no trade-off. 
&ldquo;The early 1980s were a period of high unemployment and high inflation. The 2010s were a period of low unemployment and low inflation. The 1960s were a period of low unemployment and rising inflation. Today is a period of rising unemployment and rising inflation, although both are starting from low levels. There are an unlimited number of possible combinations of low and high.
&ldquo;The point is there is no correlation. Each metric goes its own way due to a variety of factors. Neither metric is dominated by the other.
&ldquo;This means that the dual mandate can be impossible to pursue much of the time. In turn, the Fed has to choose to address one part of the mandate or the other knowing it cannot address both. This process of prioritizing between two bad choices is where the Fed is today.&rdquo;
Jim says if the Fed had any sense, it would take its cue from market-based interest rates such as the yield on a 1-month Treasury bill &mdash; currently 4.305%. The yield fell sharply late last year, suggesting an oncoming recession. And yet the Fed keeps the fed funds rate at a higher 4.5%.
&ldquo;As always,&rdquo; Jim laments, &ldquo;the Fed is behind the curve.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />War on Cash Update, U.K. Edition
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />And now for an intriguing development in the war on cash&hellip;
&ldquo;Uber is now allowing passengers across most of the U.K. to pay in cash,&rdquo; reports the BBC.
The company did a test run in four cities over the last 18 months. It was so well-received it&rsquo;s being rolled out nationwide &mdash; except in London.
That said, &ldquo;Individual drivers can still opt out of accepting notes and coins, partly if they are worried about safety of carrying them in their vehicles.&rdquo;
<a href="https://5minforecast.com/2022/08/09/the-return-of-cash-but-will-it-last/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">We took note</a> in 2022 when more and more people across the pond were turning to cash as a means of budget discipline during lean times.
&ldquo;People will be taking out cash and physically putting it into pots, saying &lsquo;this is what I have for bills, this is what I have for food and this is what&rsquo;s left&rsquo;,&rdquo; said Natalie Ceeney of a pro-cash organization called Cash Action Group.
Only last week, a parliamentary committee delivered a major report on the use of cash. It expressed concern for the well-being of people who still rely on it &mdash; not just the budget-minded but also, for instance, people with learning disabilities and victims of domestic abuse who don&rsquo;t want to be electronically tracked by their partners.
The committee stopped short of recommending that cash acceptance by businesses be made mandatory &mdash; but if more companies like Uber get the message, it won&rsquo;t take the heavy hand of government to keep cash viable.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />What a turnaround from two or three years ago &mdash; when we were sounding the alarm about the end of cash and the advent of central bank digital currencies, both in the United States and elsewhere.
Not that we should ever let our guard down. <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/what-if-trump-breaks-this-promise" target="_blank" rel="noopener">I spun an outlier scenario</a> in January under which Donald Trump might be tempted to go back on his promise that he&rsquo;d never allow an American CBDC.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />&ldquo;Supply Chains and Stocking Up&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The title of today&rsquo;s Bullet No. 5 is also the subject line of a reader&rsquo;s email&hellip;
&ldquo;Hi Dave &mdash; Over the years you have frequently given excellent advice re what sorts of items one might wish to stock up on under different circumstances - possible grid failure, financial collapse, COVID...
&ldquo;I am curious if anyone is talking about what items are likely to become in short supply if the tariffs stay in effect and the supply chain issues become intractable. I have heard, for instance, that pharmaceuticals are largely imported from China. On the other hand, I would imagine that American companies manufacture plenty of TP (recall the run on this item in the early COVID days).
&ldquo;My point being that, I would guess, a different set of items is likely to become scarce or prohibitively expensive if the current trade policy continues...
&ldquo;Thanks for all you do!&rdquo;
Dave responds: I didn&rsquo;t realize this e-letter was so useful that way. Certainly not by design!
The problem in this instance is that &ldquo;no one knows what is going to happen to U.S.-China trade,&rdquo; writes Molson Hart.
We introduced you to Mr. Hart on Friday. He runs Viahart, a Texas-based maker of educational toys. Like many entrepreneurs, he&rsquo;s dealing firsthand with the day-to-day uncertainty.
In a lengthy post on X over the weekend, he shared the following flowchart to illustrate the many unknowns of the present moment. When thinking about any given product, he says you should start with the question at the top and go from there&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/362aZmY2HFoPAxvcktxjeF/d3047d225b61a1eb855dde2903713adf/viahart_tweet_chart.png" alt="Flowchart" />
<a href="https://x.com/Molson_Hart/status/1918769228095930493" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The entire post</a> is worth a read because it&rsquo;s replete with examples of specific goods. And those consequences are in both China and the United States, he hastens to add.
&ldquo;We know that there's going to be a mess,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;But we don't know how it will affect us and how the people of each country will react.&rdquo;
It&rsquo;s still astonishing to me that none of this has made it to the front page of The Wall Street Journal.
But that&rsquo;s what alternative and &ldquo;decentralized&rdquo; media are there for. Rest assured we&rsquo;ll stay on top of the story for as long as it lasts&hellip;

High-na-euv

Time for an update on the potential for “one of the biggest turnarounds in tech history” — as Paradigm’s AI authority James Altucher billed it here in mid-March

High NA EUV

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Buffett&rsquo;s Bind, Your Opportunity
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The biggest question about the future of Berkshire Hathaway is now settled. The second-biggest question is still completely up in the air.
As perhaps you&rsquo;ve heard, Warren Buffett announced on Saturday during BRK&rsquo;s annual shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska that he&rsquo;s hanging it up as CEO.
Assuming the board goes along with his wishes, his designated successor Greg Abel takes over at the start of 2026 &mdash; at which time Buffett will be 95.
We won&rsquo;t dwell on the changing of the guard, because you can read that anywhere.
Nor will we spend much time on Buffett&rsquo;s other comments over the weekend &mdash; except for an interesting juxtaposition.
He knocked the president&rsquo;s tariff policy: &ldquo;Trade should not be a weapon.&rdquo;
But at the same time, he suggested there&rsquo;s nothing about what&rsquo;s happening in Washington today that alters his perennial optimism about America: "If I were being born today, I would just keep negotiating in the womb until they said, &lsquo;You could be in the United States.&rsquo;&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Now, about that second-biggest question&hellip; 
It has to do with the stupendous amount of cash on BRK&rsquo;s balance sheet &mdash; a record $348 billion. That&rsquo;s almost 30% of the company&rsquo;s $1.2 trillion market cap.
Why has Buffett been so hesitant to put that cash to work?
On Saturday, he said what he&rsquo;s always said whenever BRK&rsquo;s cash pile was historically high: He&rsquo;d readily put that cash to work if he could pick up a business that offered good value and that he&rsquo;d want to hold long-term. Along those lines, he said it would be the &ldquo;dumbest thing in the world&rdquo; to drop $50 billion just for the sake of shrinking BRK&rsquo;s cash holdings.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />A better, more satisfying answer to the question is one that Buffett did not dwell on this weekend &mdash; but has in the past.
As far back as the early 1990s, Buffett acknowledged the sheer size of Berkshire was such that it could no longer invest in smallish companies with explosive growth potential.
It was those sorts of investments that helped BRK achieve an annual average return of 15% from 1956&ndash;1993 &mdash; an unparalleled stretch of profitability.
He expounded on this victim-of-his-own success phenomenon in 1999 &mdash; another time he was sitting on a substantial cash pile. &ldquo;If I was running $1 million today, or $10 million for that matter, I&rsquo;d be fully invested,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a huge structural advantage not to have a lot of money.&rdquo;
As such, &ldquo;The universe I can&rsquo;t play in has become more attractive than the universe I can play in. I have to look for elephants. It may be that the elephants are not as attractive as the mosquitoes. But that is the universe I must live in.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Important point: Buffett can&rsquo;t operate in that universe &mdash; but even with just a modest grubstake, you can.
That&rsquo;s critical at a time when Paradigm&rsquo;s own James Altucher &mdash; who wrote a book called Trade Like Warren Buffett &mdash; sees a major shift coming for markets this month.
As James warned many of our readers during April, &ldquo;The stocks that went up in the last rally are not the same ones that will lead the market higher this year.&rdquo;
What are the stocks that went up in the last rally? The &ldquo;Magnificent 7&rdquo; &mdash; the Amazons, the Apples and such.
Buffett knows what James knows: That&rsquo;s why Berkshire bailed from a substantial portion of its AAPL position during 2024.
But while Buffett is hamstrung and has to content himself with collecting a 4% yield on his cash&hellip; you can put cash to work in the companies Buffett can&rsquo;t.
James is guiding his Microcap Millionaire readers to the very best opportunities that will lead the market for the rest of 2025.

If you&rsquo;re not among them, you should know James anticipates an urgent catalyst for these lucrative names that could power them to gains of 1,000% or better. And that catalyst will begin to play out this Wednesday afternoon &mdash; <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2437867">for reasons he&rsquo;ll show you when you click here</a>.

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" /> Dispatches From the Trade-War Front Lines
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;What a number of retailers are telling me is that they have about five&ndash;seven weeks of normal inventory levels remaining,&rdquo; says Gene Seroka, who runs the Port of Los Angeles.
&ldquo;If nothing changes, then we&rsquo;ll start seeing fewer selections on the store shelves and on websites as we try to buy online,&rdquo; Seroka tells Bloomberg TV. &ldquo;And that will also cause price increases.&rdquo;
As for the sprawling operation he oversees &mdash; the Port of Los Angeles &mdash; he says arrivals this week &ldquo;will be down 35%-plus percent year over year.
&ldquo;Major retailers, home-improvement stores and even manufacturers who source parts from China are saying that imports from that country have all but stopped because the price of products made in China now is 2&frac12; times what it was last month. And they just can&rsquo;t justify that.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />And yet Donald Trump remains nonchalant about the prospect of imports from China drying up.
Asked about it on NBC&rsquo;s Meet the Press this weekend, he came back to the &ldquo;dolls&rdquo; example we mentioned here on Friday.
"I don't think a beautiful baby girl that's 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I think they can have three dolls or four dolls... they don't need to have 250 pencils. They can have five."
It&rsquo;s not the first time Team Trump has trotted out this curious line of argument. Said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in March: "Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream."
Well, no. But considering that a middle-class existence is increasingly out of reach for many Americans &mdash; perhaps the primary reason Trump was elected last year in the first place &mdash; &ldquo;cheap goods&rdquo; are one of the few things Americans still have to hang onto between now and the time America&rsquo;s industrial glory days are supposed to be restored&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Meanwhile, Bessent&rsquo;s hopes of lining up other U.S. trading partners to achieve a &ldquo;grand encirclement&rdquo; of China look increasingly shaky.
A few weeks ago, he described a scheme involving the governments of several large Asian economies as a group &mdash; Japan, South Korea, India, Vietnam.
&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve been good military allies, not perfect economic allies,&rdquo; he said. But after reaching trade deals with them, &ldquo;then we can approach China as a group.&rdquo;
Reminder: 64 days remain in the Trump administration&rsquo;s 90-day pause on its &ldquo;reciprocal&rdquo; tariff regime &mdash; time in which to make deals with dozens of countries.
From the start, Japan seemed like the most likely candidate for an early deal. Tokyo sent a delegation to Washington within days of the pause announcement. A second round of talks took place last week.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> But it&rsquo;s a long way from here to a done deal with Japan. 
After the second round of talks, Tokyo&rsquo;s top negotiator Ryosei Akazwa put it like this: "We have been telling them that the entire series of tariffs are regrettable and have strongly insisted they be revised.
&ldquo;Unless this demand is acknowledged in an ultimate package, there is no way we can agree to a deal."
That&rsquo;s a long list of unresolved issues &mdash; tariffs on everything from cars to auto parts to steel and aluminum, to say nothing of the so-called reciprocal tariffs.
On Friday, the man at the top &mdash; Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba &mdash; left a not-so-subtle hint about the lack of progress. He said any additional tariffs on Japanese cars are &ldquo;absolutely unacceptable.&rdquo;
To be continued&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Trump&rsquo;s Vietnam Moment (Again)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Trump can&rsquo;t afford to become consumed by Ukraine if he wants to achieve the rest of his agenda on trade, immigration and real growth,&rdquo; Jim Rickards reminded his Strategic Intelligence readers on Friday.
Since February, Jim has warned that Trump faces a &ldquo;Vietnam moment&rdquo; &mdash; in which a war waged by a previous president becomes an albatross around the current president&rsquo;s neck unless the current president acts swiftly.
&ldquo;The danger for Trump is that if he cannot end the war quickly, it will go from being Biden&rsquo;s war to Trump&rsquo;s war in the eyes of the American people,&rdquo; says Jim.
&ldquo;Putin&rsquo;s demands have not changed since the war began. They are: Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, de-Nazification and no NATO membership. These demands are clear and nonnegotiable. What is negotiable is the extent of Ukrainian territorial loss. Let&rsquo;s hope Trump sees reason and basically agrees to Putin&rsquo;s terms with some face-saving measures.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> But the new minerals deal with Ukraine appears to tie Trump to the hip of Ukraine&rsquo;s leader Zelenskyy.
We&rsquo;re learning a few additional details about the agreement signed last week. It seems future U.S. military aid to Ukraine will count as a contribution to a joint U.S.-Ukrainian &ldquo;investment fund&rdquo; to develop Ukraine&rsquo;s mineral wealth.
No sooner was the ink dry that the Trump administration approved a $50 million arms sale to Kyiv. That was followed by State Department approval of an additional $311 million in arms sales &mdash; mostly for pilot training and maintenance of American-made F-16s.
Those aren&rsquo;t large numbers in the scheme of the $175 billion in aid to Ukraine that Congress has approved since 2022.
But it does reinforce the language Treasury Secretary Bessent used when signing the minerals deal, language that harked back to the Biden era: &ldquo;This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine over the long term&hellip; And to be clear, no state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Meanwhile, Trump took a huge slap at Moscow on Friday, whether he intended to or not&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4KDaDRWMf6nEWWM6pzFFCV/3d85492bb03634a75dc53bb59b3c3f81/Trump.png" alt="trump" width="540px" />
There is no way the Kremlin could interpret that except as an insult.
As we said <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/ai-nukes-and-gold">on the occasion of V-E Day last year</a>, the Soviets suffered 27 million dead in World War II compared with just over 400,000 Americans.
Really, the Allies&rsquo; victory at Normandy over 11 Nazi divisions was made possible only because the Soviets tied down another 228 Nazi divisions on the Eastern Front.
Russia will mark the 80th anniversary of V-E Day on Friday with a huge military parade, as usual. In 1995, Bill Clinton went to Moscow to take part in the 50th anniversary commemoration. George W. Bush did the same for the 60th in 2005.
For the 80th, the list of foreign dignitaries in attendance will include&hellip; China&rsquo;s Xi Jinping.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/Bf0GnyPPYI2wLNbr0HXO0/44ac651c1bec666b46951e456c05ae2e/ChinaDaily.png" alt="China Daily" width="540px" />
If there was ever any hope that Trump could somehow split the Russia-China friendship &mdash; which Xi has described as &ldquo;stronger than an alliance&rdquo; &mdash; it&rsquo;s over now.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Oil at New 4-Year Lows
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The big market story today is the price of crude plunging to its lowest since early 2021.
The OPEC+ nations can&rsquo;t seem to get their act together on production targets. Over the weekend, Saudi Arabia and Russia &mdash; the top global producers after the United States &mdash; agreed to raise output by triple the volume previously scheduled.
With that, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is under $57.
That&rsquo;s good news if you&rsquo;re planning a driving trip soon. Not so good if you&rsquo;re an American oil company. And maybe not so good for the Trump administration&rsquo;s agenda, either.
As we mentioned last month, the White House no doubt welcomes lower oil prices. But if they get much lower than this, some wells will cease to be profitable and their operators will cap them. Which would have the effect of constraining supply and pushing prices back higher.
(This phenomenon is captured by a common saying among commodities traders: &ldquo;The cure for low prices is low prices.&rdquo;)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Meanwhile, the U.S. stock market&rsquo;s rally is taking a breather.
After nine-straight winning sessions &mdash; enough to wipe out all the market&rsquo;s losses since the &ldquo;Liberation Day&rdquo; announcement on April 2 &mdash; the S&amp;P 500 is slightly in the red. At last check, the index is down a quarter percent to 5,672. The Nasdaq&rsquo;s losses are steeper, while the Dow is slightly in the green.
Gold is starting the week on another furious rally. As we write, it&rsquo;s up nearly $70 and back above $3,300. Silver&rsquo;s rally is weaker (what else is new?) but it&rsquo;s back over $32.
Bitcoin is in retreat &mdash; barely above $94,000 after surpassing $97k toward the end of last week.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: DOGE&rsquo;s Impact?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> One of our regular readers chimed in after we took note of the April job numbers and the relatively few cuts to the federal payroll the last two months&hellip;
&ldquo;According to your DOGE update,which had a grammar mistake, the total in my math is 13,000 multiplied by $100,000 average salary and benifits for government employes is a Billion three hundred million. Not negligible in my book. That is a savings every year! Love the Five!
&ldquo;P.S. Correct me if I'm wrong.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Hmmm&hellip; $1.3 billion out of a $6.7 trillion annual budget? Feels like small beer.
The Office of Personnel Management says the average annual pay across the entire federal workforce is $106,382.
If the federal workforce totals 2.4 million (not including the Postal Service) and you get rid of everyone, you&rsquo;re looking at $256 billion out of a $6.7 trillion annual budget. Still not that much!
I wouldn&rsquo;t harp on it except that the DOGE boys kept making a huge deal at the outset of this administration about all the jobs they were cutting. Now granted, some of those cuts have gotten tied up in the courts, but still&hellip; you&rsquo;d think there&rsquo;d have been more progress by now?
(Oh, we&rsquo;re still looking for the grammar mistake&hellip;)
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

shutterstock 661889995

The biggest question about the future of Berkshire Hathaway is now settled. The second-biggest question is still completely up in the air.

Buffett’s Bind

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Trump Just Tanked China Trade Talks
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Whatever it is that mainstream media are smoking this morning &mdash; I definitely don&rsquo;t want some.
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;China Mulls U.S. Overtures on Trade Talks&hellip;&rdquo; (NPR)</li>
<li>&ldquo;China Open to Talks With Trump Admin on Lowering Tariffs&hellip;&rdquo; (Fox News)</li>
<li>&ldquo;China Says It&rsquo;s Evaluating Possible Trade Talks With the U.S.&hellip;&rdquo; (CNN)</li>
</ul>
To be sure, there are caveats. The New York Times points out that Beijing &ldquo;will only engage in negotiations if Washington cancels its tariffs on Chinese goods first.&rdquo;
Even so, Bloomberg issued this alert shortly after the opening bell: &ldquo;Stocks rise on jobs data and signs of a thaw in U.S.-China relations.&rdquo;
Wow. The mystery mind-altering substance is so strong, it blinds corporate media to something else that happened in the previous 24 hours&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The reality is that Donald Trump dropped a bomb yesterday on any hopes for &ldquo;China trade talks.&rdquo; And almost no one has figured it out.
Perhaps it was understandable. Trump shaking up his national security/foreign policy team was a big story. It was from Trump&rsquo;s social-media feed that the world learned not only that Mike Waltz was out as national security adviser, but that he was getting a consolation prize as United Nations ambassador.
But the Trump post immediately following that announcement was far more important&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/145CCQZEJtQ0xzgN2ZzxFQ/54a9147ba64bdec8730ab11a883ac192/trump_tweet.png" alt="Trump post" />
Gee, who imports the lion&rsquo;s share of Iran&rsquo;s oil &mdash; 90% by most estimates?
China.
So China &ldquo;will not be allowed to do business with the United States of America in any way, shape or form&rdquo;? Really?
As the military analyst William Schryver points out&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2ay9WuWD4B7kVYDqKKJqXY/0a60d95fcdd38535862ed6150d0e5dc5/schryver_tweet.png" alt="William Schryver tweet" />
Of course, a plethora of U.S. sanctions already applies to Iranian oil.
And they&rsquo;re just as ineffective as the sanctions on Russian oil &mdash; which also finds its way to China in mass quantities.
Trump stepped up existing Iran sanctions as soon as he took office this winter. But as the Oil Price website reported in March, Iranian crude exports to China carried on as usual &mdash; &ldquo;as traders and middlemen rearrange tanker flows and increase ship-to-ship transfers, especially offshore Malaysia, vessel-tracking analysts say.&rdquo;
Beijing and Tehran signed a deal in 2021 &mdash; China prepays for Iranian oil by investing in Iran&rsquo;s energy, manufacturing and transportation infrastructure. Neither side is going to walk away from that just because Trump tells them to.
So exactly how Trump intends to enforce his new wishes is a mystery.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />That said, today is Friday &mdash; and in recent years, major U.S. military action in the Middle East tends to happen when U.S. markets are closed for the weekend.
<a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/morning-in-america-if-only" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Last year</a>, U.S. forces launched airstrikes against &ldquo;Iran-linked&rdquo; targets in Iraq and Syria literally the moment the market closed at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. Nor is that the only example.
As it happens, Washington and Tehran were supposed to have another round of talks this weekend over Iran&rsquo;s nuclear program &mdash; but now those talks have been postponed.
We don&rsquo;t know why. Perhaps Iranian negotiators view the new sanctions as a demonstration of bad faith on Trump&rsquo;s part. Or the U.S. negotiators were told to walk away because Trump is giving up on negotiations and giving in to his most warmongering advisers like Marco Rubio (who now holds the portfolio of both national security adviser and secretary of state)..
Only yesterday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tweeted out another threat directed at Tehran: &ldquo;You will pay the CONSEQUENCE at the time and place of our choosing.&rdquo;
That said, if military action is imminent, the oil market isn&rsquo;t sniffing it out.
Often when the war drums are beating, the oil price rises on a Friday because traders don&rsquo;t want to be &ldquo;short&rdquo; crude going into the weekend &mdash; only to have their faces ripped off when the market reopens Sunday night and the price jumps 4-5%.
But as we write, crude is down nearly 1% on the day to $58.67.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />&ldquo;Economic COVID&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;It&rsquo;s like an economic COVID. It all happens [in China] first,&rdquo; tweets Molson Hart, CEO of Viahart, a Texas-based maker of educational toys.
Here&rsquo;s an additional reality check on the prospect of China trade talks &mdash; starting with a reminder that West Coast ports continue to grind to a halt.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3DFOAcFrMbzUzxQ4mOsN4i/58394030a39dcbdcefa3855f359d4018/financelot_tweet.png" alt="Financelot tweet" width="450px" />
Indeed, three more terminals at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach closed yesterday for lack of business. &ldquo;No, that isn&rsquo;t normal,&rdquo; tweets Nathan Strang of the logistics firm Flexport.
Back to Mr. Hart, CEO of the Texas toy business: &ldquo;China is feeling the pain now that we will be feeling in 10 days.
&ldquo;Layoffs at Chinese factories and trucking companies happen before layoffs at U.S. trucking companies and warehouses because of the time lag in sea shipping.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;For those who are expecting a deal, why would China agree to one if they felt that this was unfairly forced upon them?&rdquo; Mr. Hart continues.
&ldquo;Especially when the party which initiated the tariffs hasn&rsquo;t yet felt the consequences?
&ldquo;Or when your national ethos is overcoming a century of humiliation that was perpetrated by foreigners?&rdquo;
Asked yesterday about the disruptions to the supply chain and the potential for empty store shelves, Donald Trump had a curious response.
"Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally."
Hmmm&hellip; As political messaging goes, I&rsquo;m not really sure what word applies here &mdash; but &ldquo;winning&rdquo; isn&rsquo;t the first one that comes to mind.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Jobs: Not All They&rsquo;re Cracked up to Be
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The April job numbers aren&rsquo;t as good as the headline figure would lead you to believe.
&ldquo;The U.S. economy added a stronger-than-expected 177,000 jobs in April despite swirling recession fears,&rdquo; says CNN.
Right, but the wonks at the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the March and February numbers lower by 58,000. The three-month average works out to 171,000 &mdash; down from 232,000 for the prior three months.
Also concerning: Weekly average hours worked declined in a host of industries and sectors &mdash; including leisure and hospitality, which suggests consumers are cutting back on travel and dining out.
The official unemployment rate held steady at 4.2% &mdash; low by historical standards, but higher compared with, say, most of 2022&ndash;23.
➢ DOGE update: The federal government&rsquo;s payroll shrank last month by only 9,000, on top of last month&rsquo;s figure of 4,000. In a federal workforce of 2.4 million, the impact of DOGE so far is negligible.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />But when it comes to markets, perception matters more than reality. The perception that China trade talks are nigh and the job market remains strong is propelling stocks higher today.
The S&amp;P 500 is up 1.25% at last check to 5,673. The index is on track to easily end the week above the midpoint between the Feb. 19 record close and the April 8 low. As we&rsquo;ve mentioned more than once in recent days, that clears the way for a return to those all-time highs of 6,144.
And once that happens, colleague Alan Knuckman says basic chart work points to a sustained rally reaching as high as 7,500.
Today&rsquo;s jump comes despite earnings disappointments from two more Magnificent 7 names.
Well, strictly speaking, the earnings were fine. But the Street doesn&rsquo;t like Apple&rsquo;s plans to shift production of U.S.-bound iPhones and iPads from China to India and Vietnam; AAPL is down 3.75% on the day.
Amazon is also in the red, albeit by only 0.25%, after issuing a cautious outlook for the current quarter amid tariff uncertainty.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Meanwhile, tension is returning to the bond market &mdash; prices falling, yields rising.
The yield on a 10-year Treasury note is up to 4.3% &mdash; up big from 4.17% on Tuesday. That might be because Japan&rsquo;s finance minister says the country&rsquo;s stash of U.S. Treasuries is &ldquo;a card&rdquo; for trade talks with Washington.
Note well: Japan is the biggest foreign holder of Uncle Sam&rsquo;s debt.
Gold is settling into a nice consolidation pattern after running up too far, too fast in April: In the last 24 hours, it&rsquo;s up $23 to $3,262. Alas, silver is down another quarter today to $32.13.
Bitcoin sits more or less where it did at this time yesterday, over $97,000.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Only one chart in today&rsquo;s edition, and it&rsquo;s this&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3mjMJH5QiDaUY1SPrl5bIV/13216ca0ed0b00fe7da17955021c0de5/govt_trust_graph.png" alt="Trust in Govt graph" width="450px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Amazon, AI
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />We pick up today&rsquo;s mailbag where yesterday&rsquo;s left off &mdash; with Amazon&rsquo;s aborted plan to list the impact of tariffs next to the prices of imported goods.
&ldquo;Amazon (and others) need to be more transparent in their product listings regarding the manufacturer's country of origin,&rdquo; a reader writes.
&ldquo;It is not always readily apparent until you receive the product. I prefer to purchase products made in America, but it isn&rsquo;t always specified.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />On the subject of AI and its demands on the power grid, one of our regulars writes in from the Great Plains&hellip;
&ldquo;Thought you might like to know that our public power provider in Lincoln, Nebraska is asking citizens for input next Thursday at 6:00 p.m. CDT on &lsquo;future power needs.&rsquo;
&ldquo;They plan to host an in-person meeting as well as on Zoom, should you care to tune in. Go to LES.com/Generation at that time on May 8, if interested.&nbsp;
&ldquo;I plan to ask about data centers, a couple of which are on the drawing board for Lincoln.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Thanks for the heads-up. We see Pennsylvania&rsquo;s Public Utility Commission held a hearing a few days ago with input from four of the state&rsquo;s power providers as well as Amazon and Google.
The issue definitely isn&rsquo;t going away&hellip;

mushroom cloud

Donald Trump dropped a bomb on any hopes for “China trade talks.” And almost no one has figured it out.

💥 Trump Nukes China Trade Talks

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />&ldquo;All of the Above&rdquo; &mdash; What AI Needs Now
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Last year we described AI as &ldquo;the monster that ate the power grid&rdquo; &mdash; but will it really end up consuming 99% of all electricity generation?
That would starve every other industry of the power they need &mdash; to say nothing of our homes.
But spend enough time on social media, and that&rsquo;s the claim you&rsquo;ll see attributed to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> It seems Congress has finally gotten around to holding hearings about an urgent matter we first raised in January of 2024 &mdash; the prodigious demands that AI data centers will make on the U.S. power grid.
The grid was under strain even before AI burst into public consciousness in November 2022 with the release of ChatGPT 3.5.
Throughout the 2010s, utility operators were shutting down coal and nuclear plants &mdash; and they weren&rsquo;t bringing nearly enough wind and solar capacity online to take up the slack.
All those &ldquo;green&rdquo; regulations and &ldquo;renewable&rdquo; mandates came back to bite hard in incidents like the Texas winter blackout of early 2021. (Europeans also paid a price for the same lunacy, as we saw this week with the nationwide blackouts in Spain and Portugal.)
Last month, the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee invited Schmidt among others to testify about AI&rsquo;s electricity demands.
To be clear, we&rsquo;ve gone back and forth over the transcript and nowhere did Schmidt forecast AI might suck up 99% of all power generation. Beware of what you read from slop accounts on X.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> What Schmidt did say, however, was nearly as alarming.
For instance: &ldquo;People are planning 10 gigawatt data centers now... An average nuclear power plant in the United States is one gigawatt. How many nuclear power plants can we make in one year while we're planning this 10-gigawatt data center? It gives you a sense of how big this crisis is.&rdquo;
Or this: &ldquo;Data centers will require an additional 29 gigawatts of power by 2027 and 67 more gigawatts by 2030. Gives you a sense of the scale that we're talking. These things are industrial at a scale I have never seen in my life in the terms of energy planning.&rdquo;
And Schmidt is no newbie to the issue of data centers and power consumption. His time as executive chairman of Google and its parent company Alphabet in the 2010s coincided with a huge buildout of data centers to accommodate new big-bandwidth uses &mdash; video streaming, high-end gaming, crypto mining.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Schmidt didn&rsquo;t emphasize this point, but we will: Building new power plants doesn&rsquo;t happen with a snap of the fingers.
Even under the best of circumstances, the permitting process for a new natural gas-fired power plant takes over a year. Often it takes several years. Nuclear, of course, takes far longer.
Figure on a typical timeline of 18 months and the process begins tomorrow. The fact remains data centers are being built faster than power plants.
In that case, you&rsquo;re looking at the scenario we spun last summer &mdash; there&rsquo;s simply not enough juice to go around.
Homeowners and businesses alike would be dealing with AI-induced blackouts. Either that, or the data centers would have to power down for hours or days at a time.
Schmidt&rsquo;s solution? He&rsquo;s one of the people who opt for &ldquo;all of the above&rdquo; when it comes to available power-generation sources.
&ldquo;What we need from you,&rdquo; he told the assembled congress members, &ldquo;is we need the energy in all forms, renewable, non-renewable, whatever. It needs to be there, and it needs to be there quickly.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Schmidt might well get his wish straight from President Trump. No congressional action required.
The issue is absolutely on Trump&rsquo;s radar. During a conversation with Elon Musk last summer, he said, "You are going to need enormous amounts of electricity, nearly double what we currently generate for the entire nation, if you can believe it."
The accuracy of the claim isn&rsquo;t the point. The point is that the president recognizes the problem &mdash; and the time crunch.
He sees red tape that needs to be cut &mdash; to wit, all those &ldquo;clean energy&rdquo; mandates along with restrictions on drilling and mining.
What&rsquo;s more, it all comes back to the &ldquo;American birthright&rdquo; thesis of Paradigm&rsquo;s macroeconomics authority Jim Rickards. There&rsquo;s a $150 trillion trove of mineral wealth lying beneath millions and millions of acres of federally owned land.
Team Trump is keen to tap into it &mdash; in no small part because of how that bounty can help power AI. Not just the natural gas and uranium and coal to supply power plants &mdash; but also the copper, nickel, chromium and other metals essential for the grid&rsquo;s smooth operation.

And as we&rsquo;ve been telling you all week, Jim believes Trump will take the next essential step in this process tomorrow &mdash; giving you the chance to accelerate your gains from America&rsquo;s $150 trillion mineral riches.
Time&rsquo;s a-wasting if you want your shot at three new official recommendations, each with the potential to 10x your money. <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2437171">Give Jim&rsquo;s latest briefing a look right here &mdash; before it&rsquo;s too late to act</a>.

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />About Those Ukrainian Minerals&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> As impressive as the mineral bounty of the &ldquo;American birthright&rdquo; is&hellip; the mineral bounty of Ukraine will almost surely be a bust.
As perhaps you&rsquo;ve heard, U.S. and Ukrainian officials signed a deal last night in which Washington will gain access to some of Ukraine&rsquo;s natural resources.
The deal comes two months after the epic shout-down at the White House between Trump and Ukraine&rsquo;s President Zelenskyy.
The New York Times is not wrong when it says, &ldquo;The Trump administration did not immediately provide details about the agreement, and it was not clear what it meant for the future of U.S. military support for Ukraine.&rdquo;
A more pithy hot take comes from the frequently insightful &ldquo;Armchair Warlord&rdquo; account on X&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5dCp9ygooDShwnuwgwkuq4/2345745c03b9814eead620298bf032b5/ArmchairTweet.png" alt="armchair tweet" width="540px" />
All the problems with this deal that we cited here in February remain.
The most valuable Ukrainian minerals &mdash; the so-called rare earth elements &mdash; lie mostly under territory that Moscow will control in a postwar settlement. Otherwise, Ukraine has mostly coal and iron ore &mdash; both of which exist in abundance throughout much of the planet.
At the same time, the deal amplifies the risk that Ukraine becomes Trump&rsquo;s war. Trump is staring down what Jim Rickards calls a &ldquo;Vietnam moment&rdquo; &mdash; analogous to Richard Nixon choosing to carry on Lyndon Johnson&rsquo;s war for five more years.
Barring some unexpected development, informed observers we follow (like Daniel L. Davis at the Defense Priorities think tank) say the war looks set to grind on indefinitely until Moscow achieves its aims &mdash; not territorial conquest as much as the total destruction of the Ukrainian army.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The Worst Is Over (Maybe)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The worst might be over for the stock market &mdash; at least for a while.
When we left you yesterday, Mr. Market was bummed by the first-quarter GDP numbers. But by day&rsquo;s end, the S&amp;P 500 scratched out a tiny gain, closing at 5,569. This morning it&rsquo;s up a solid 1.3% to 5,642.
As a refresher from yesterday, 5,563 marks the midpoint between the index&rsquo;s all-time high set on Feb. 19&hellip; and the most recent low set on April 8.
If the S&amp;P can end the week comfortably over 5,563, that might well clear the way for the index to reclaim those February highs and continue rallying from there.
That said, the April job numbers are due tomorrow. Expectations among Wall Street economists are low &mdash; a meager 130,000 new jobs for the month. Stay tuned&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Helping drive the rally today are solid quarterly numbers from two of the &ldquo;Magnificent 7&rdquo; stocks.
Sales at Facebook parent Meta grew 16% &mdash; and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is blowing off the risk that the knock-on effects of tariffs will put a dent in his company&rsquo;s advertising revenue. Wall Street is buying what he&rsquo;s selling, pushing META up 6% on the day.
Meanwhile, Microsoft reported big growth on both the top and bottom lines; MSFT shares are up over 9% at last check.
Apple and Amazon report their numbers after the closing bell today. AAPL is hanging tough &mdash; basically flat on the day &mdash; after a federal judge slammed the company for violating an antitrust ruling, even referring the case to prosecutors for criminal contempt.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The big story in the commodity complex is crude &mdash; trying to pick itself up off the floor after yesterday&rsquo;s pummeling.
As we write, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate fetches $58.90 &mdash; up from yesterday, but still under $60. Apart from the worst of the tariff scare last month, we haven&rsquo;t seen sub-$60 oil since early 2021.
&ldquo;I simply don&rsquo;t understand how we can have two hot wars happening simultaneously, a trade war between the world&rsquo;s two biggest superpowers and a weak &mdash; and getting weaker &mdash; dollar, with oil falling out of bed,&rdquo; writes Sean Ring in today&rsquo;s Rude Awakening.
His best guess? The tariff-driven disruptions to the supply chain that we mentioned both <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/trump-wants-to-buy-mining-stocks">yesterday</a> and <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/trump-revives-clinton-scandal">Monday</a>. Looking at the charts, Sean says oil&rsquo;s downside target is an eye-watering $40.72.
Gold got whacked after we hit &ldquo;send&rdquo; on yesterday&rsquo;s edition. It&rsquo;s down $100 in less than 24 hours, the bid now $3,218.
If it makes you feel any better, that was a record high three weeks ago. Get used to these $100-or-more intraday moves, both up and down.
Silver&rsquo;s retreat continues &mdash; now $32.29.
Bitcoin just crested the $97,000 mark for the first time since February. Intriguing&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Great Moments in Free Speech
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> It&rsquo;s not quite true that the Texas House of Representatives just voted to criminalize memes &mdash; but the backlash to House Bill 366 is both understandable and valid.
Supposedly the measure aims to require more transparency for political ads in the AI era. As The Texas Tribune describes it, the bill requires ads &ldquo;to include disclosures if the image, audio, or video recording used were substantially altered.&rdquo; Violators face up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine.
Sponsored by former House Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont), the measure passed with a bipartisan supermajority of 106-39.
&ldquo;Public backlash has been fierce,&rdquo; reports the RIftTV website, &ldquo;with many calling the bill a response to Phelan&rsquo;s personal grievances over mocking memes.&rdquo;
Critics who watched the debate on the House floor see a slippery slope, such as this First Amendment attorney who says the bill effectively criminalizes satire and parody.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4GTesQGNm8LijThVwZhhJI/dff3add94889883c1f72040b75aa829c/TonyTweet.png" alt="tony tweet" width="540px" />
A handful of constitutional conservatives in the House cast dissenting votes. &ldquo;We have an electorate that is informed and we already have platforms where people can talk,&rdquo; said Rep. Andy Hopper (R-Decatur). &ldquo;It is not the role of government to sit there and be a nanny state police force to decide.&rdquo;
The only upside we can report here is that the bill&rsquo;s fate in the Texas Senate is uncertain&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Surcharges
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />On the subject of Amazon&rsquo;s aborted effort to break out the effects of tariffs when listing prices &mdash; an effort quickly squashed under pressure from the Trump administration &mdash; a reader writes&hellip;
&ldquo;I am wondering if this is the first time something like this has been floated and/or done.
&ldquo;Didn't some companies begin to show the ACA (Obamacare) surcharge on their receipts? Thus showing how much the ACA was adding to the cost of the product or service. I believe that was also met with hostility from the Obama administration, and many of the companies removed that line from their receipts.
&ldquo;I wanted to run it by the 5 and get your thoughts. Is this issue something new or just a case of &lsquo;who is in office&rsquo;?
&ldquo;Always love the insight from the 5! Keep up the great work!&rdquo;
Dave responds: You have a good memory. From our voluminous archives comes this item we mentioned in 2023&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/14orcQ3RD8cyhJMBHvAaf1/6a3304a6b110df9a9a3cd0c0aa7076b7/OutofContext.png" alt="out of context tweet" width="540px" />
That&rsquo;s a Los Angeles restaurant, tacking on a 4% surcharge for employees&rsquo; health insurance. The restaurant owner got roasted on social media, but he said he was hardly alone.
Under the Affordable Care Act of 2010, small businesses with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees must offer health coverage. Employer premiums have soared in recent years, owing to the fact the American health care system is <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/luigi-mangione-isnt-the-problem">a crony-capitalist cartel</a>.
So yes, there you go, an Obamacare surcharge.
In addition, there are many instances of restaurants and other service businesses tacking on surcharges when states jack up the minimum wage.
Back to the Amazon incident: Key players in the shipping/logistics biz like Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen think AMZN shouldn&rsquo;t have backed down so quickly&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2ufO8oopA3FLomROTYlydD/f7b4422a00a4bdb5057fc86a7b83ffbe/RyanTweet.png" alt="ryan tweet" width="540px" />
Hmmm&hellip;
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

shutterstock 2498421665

Last year we described AI as “the monster that ate the power grid” — but will it really end up consuming 99% of all electricity generation?

What AI Needs Now

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Trump Wants to Buy Mining Stocks
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The story went unnoticed for nearly a week. Yesterday, it blew up in the segments of social media devoted to finance.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3Yuss8i58vlBmZam9FxmTM/4b8a81c757080aa409623304ca59df0c/WalterTweet.png" alt="Walter Tweet" width="540px" />
A week ago today, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum spoke at a conference organized by the Hamm Institute for American Energy.
He let it drop that the Trump administration is looking to invest in mining companies.
&ldquo;We should be taking some of our balance sheet and making investments,&rdquo; he said. As such, the U.S. government might need to make an &ldquo;equity investment in each of these companies that&rsquo;s taking on China in critical minerals.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> To be sure, this development is an intriguing twist on the &ldquo;American birthright&rdquo; story.
For months now, Paradigm macroeconomics maven Jim Rickards has been pounding the table about how the Trump administration intends to open up huge swaths of federally owned land to energy and mineral development. Potential value of the resources under that land &mdash; $150 trillion.
Jim&rsquo;s thesis got early reinforcement in February when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Team Trump was hatching a scheme to &ldquo;monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet for the American people.&rdquo;
Notice that Burgum latched onto Bessent&rsquo;s language about the &ldquo;balance sheet.&rdquo; The administration sees all those minerals and oil and gas as a federal asset. And at $150 trillion they dwarf the liability side of the balance sheet, i.e. the $36 trillion national debt.
The details are still fuzzy. But Burgum invoked the possibility of Washington forming a &ldquo;sovereign wealth fund&rdquo; similar to those of Norway, China and the Arab sheikdoms. This too is something Jim Rickards has written about &mdash; most recently in a 5 Bullets special edition on April 18. The SWF would be funded by that oil and mineral wealth.
Apparently, the idea now is for Washington to take the proceeds from that wealth and then invest directly in the companies exploiting that wealth &mdash; thereby setting priorities for which resources get mined and drilled first.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The social media reaction to this development has been interesting. And heartening.
&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t that socialism?&rdquo; says one commenter.
&ldquo;This is the same China and Russia do,&rdquo; says another.
&ldquo;This is gonna be more corruption,&rdquo; says a third. &ldquo;State buys a distressed company and bails out the owner with profits. Then they will hand the company back to the private sector on a sweetheart deal.&rdquo;
Hear, hear. Your editor is an ardent free marketeer and agrees wholeheartedly.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />But it&rsquo;s at this moment we have to remind you that you can&rsquo;t let your politics affect your investing decisions.
Like it or not, politicians and government officials make decisions every day that alter the flows of billions of dollars.
Smart investing means positioning yourself as best you can to tap into those money flows &mdash; regardless of what you think the government&rsquo;s role in the economy should or shouldn&rsquo;t be.
Which, in a way, was the subtext to the American Wealth Summit that Jim Rickards convened yesterday afternoon. Along with everything else that&rsquo;s tied in to the &ldquo;American birthright&rdquo; theme, Jim says the Trump administration is set to make an unprecedented move this Friday.
He believes it will be a rare chance for you to accelerate your gains from America&rsquo;s $150 trillion mineral endowment &mdash; which is why he&rsquo;s issuing three new official recommendations, each with 1,000% profit potential.
If you attended the summit yesterday &mdash; or if you&rsquo;re already a member of Jim&rsquo;s premium advisory Rickards&rsquo; Insider Intel &mdash; you already know what we&rsquo;re talking about. And hopefully investing accordingly.

If you&rsquo;re not, be advised that once we get past Friday, it might be too late to act. <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2436809">So follow this link and give Jim&rsquo;s presentation a look while there&rsquo;s still time</a>.

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Useless Trivia (and a Helpful Rule of Thumb)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The good news is that going into today&rsquo;s market action, the S&amp;P 500 registered its biggest six-day gain since March 2022. So says the mainstream MarketWatch site.
The bad news &mdash; which MarketWatch didn&rsquo;t convey &mdash; is that the previous big gain in 2022 occurred amid a grinding bear market that dragged down the index by 25% in 10 months.
Here&rsquo;s some more useless market trivia, noted by several mainstream outlets. Trump&rsquo;s first 100 days back in office marked &ldquo;the worst start for stocks since former President Richard Nixon&rsquo;s second term in 1973.&rdquo;
Seriously, what are you supposed to do with a factoid like that?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Now for a statistic that actually matters &mdash; because it suggests the S&amp;P 500 is tantalizingly close to staging a sustainable recovery.
Here are the relevant numbers to bear in mind: The S&amp;P set an all-time record on Feb. 19 at 6,144. The most recent low came amid the post-&rdquo;Liberation Day&rdquo; sell-off on April 8 at 4,982.
A good rule of thumb comes from colleague Alan Knuckman, our eyes and ears at the Chicago options exchanges: Once an index or a stock recovers half of its previous losses, the coast is clear for that index or stock to reclaim its all-time highs.
Yesterday, the S&amp;P came *this* close to reaching that threshold. It ended the day at 5,560 &mdash; only three points shy of that critical midpoint.
If it can overcome the 5,563 mark and stay there for two or three days, it&rsquo;s a safe bet that the index will return to 6,144 and likely climb higher still.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> That said, it&rsquo;s going to be a while longer before we get there.
The S&amp;P 500 opened the day down 2.25% &mdash; although at last check it&rsquo;s recovered half of those losses, the index now a hair below 5,500. The Dow&rsquo;s losses are narrower, the Nasdaq&rsquo;s steeper.
Gold continues to oscillate above and below $3,300. As we write it&rsquo;s at $3,308. However, silver has lost its grip on $33, the bid now $32.63.
Crude is registering a steep drop &mdash; down 3.8% to $58.11. That&rsquo;s the lowest since April 9, the day that everything was selling off hard before Trump announced the 90-day pause on his &ldquo;reciprocal&rdquo; tariffs. And the drop comes despite the weekly inventory numbers from the Energy Department showing drawdowns in crude stockpiles.
Bitcoin&rsquo;s hold on $95,000 couldn&rsquo;t last; it&rsquo;s back below $94,000.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Also Useless: GDP
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The proximate event for today&rsquo;s stock drop &mdash; we won&rsquo;t say the &ldquo;cause,&rdquo; because things are rarely that black-and-white &mdash; is the GDP number from the Commerce Department.
Before the market opened for the day, the statisticians issued their first guess at GDP growth for the first quarter of 2025.
The &ldquo;expert consensus&rdquo; among Wall Street economists called for a piddly 0.2% annualized gain. In the event, we got a 0.3% drop &mdash; the first drop since early 2022.
(We&rsquo;re sure the Trump administration will be as keen to play down this development now as the Biden administration was then.)
Much of the drop can be attributed to a big spike in imports &mdash; i.e., businesses loading up on inventory from overseas in anticipation of tariffs.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />It&rsquo;s at this point we pause to remind you that GDP is a statistical abstraction that has zero bearing on your life or your standard of living.
&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t eat GDP. You can&rsquo;t wear it. You can&rsquo;t spend it,&rdquo; said our old colleague Chris Mayer, who runs a hedge fund these days. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s just a number economists can play with.&rdquo;
Years ago, Bill Bonner &mdash; the founder of Paradigm Press&rsquo; parent company &mdash; pointed out that if you mow your lawn and your neighbor mows his lawn, that has no effect on GDP. But if you pay your neighbor $30 to mow your lawn, and he pays you $30 to mow his, GDP miraculously grows by $60!
Comical, right? But the real-world effects are much more insidious &mdash; as PayPal founder Peter Thiel pointed out during a 2022 seminar at Stanford.
Compare American life in the 1950s, he said, with American life now. If &ldquo;you shift an economy from a single-income household with a homemaker to one with two breadwinners and a third person who&rsquo;s a child-carer,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;statistically you have three jobs instead of one and therefore you have more GDP, and you will exaggerate the amount of progress that&rsquo;s happened.&rdquo;
In other words, it took only one income back in the day to support a middle-class standard of living. Now it takes both parents, scratching and struggling. But if you&rsquo;re an egghead economist, it&rsquo;s all good because &ldquo;the economy&rdquo; as measured by GDP is bigger.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Meanwhile, the Commerce Department is also out with the Federal Reserve&rsquo;s preferred gauge of inflation.
&ldquo;Core PCE&rdquo; came in flat month-over-month. The year-over-year increase was 2.6% &mdash; the lowest in nine months, but still well above the Fed&rsquo;s 2% inflation target.
The Fed&rsquo;s next policy-setting meeting is still a month away. Plenty more data is set to come in before we can make a call about whether Jerome Powell and co. will resume last year&rsquo;s rate-cutting cycle.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" /> Update: COVID Redux
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> It&rsquo;s come to this: The Trump administration is trying to assure Americans the tariffs won&rsquo;t lead to empty store shelves.
As we chronicled on Monday, ship traffic from China to the U.S. West Coast is slowing dramatically. The domino effects are easy to tease out &mdash; layoffs in the transportation sector, layoffs in retail, empty shelves.
You know the issue is entering public consciousness when infographics from high-end money managers start showing up on everyday folks&rsquo; social media feeds&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5yE9fjA50ChhnUhQhOGqdn/4090f971db61ab1cd910c2fcc360ffe4/China-Tariffs.png" alt="China Tariffs" width="450px" />
"I wouldn't think that we would have supply chain shocks," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said yesterday. "I think retailers have managed their inventory in front of this." [See the GDP numbers above.]
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;This is true of the largest retailers, but not for the smallest,&rdquo; counters Craig Fuller, CEO of the logistics firm FreightWaves.
&ldquo;Most small retailers did not stock up on inventory before the tariffs,&rdquo; Fuller tweets. &ldquo;This is an extinction event for many small American retailers and e-commerce businesses.&rdquo;
Swell. As if COVID lockdowns weren&rsquo;t bad enough for small business.
In many cases, Fuller says these vendors &ldquo;have paused all shipments from China and are not ordering new products.
&ldquo;If there isn't a resolution to Chinese tariffs by June, most of these companies will have limited inventory for the holidays. Without inventory, they have no reason to advertise. This will impact media advertising this fall.&rdquo;
Or maybe it is already. Shares of Snap Inc. &mdash; the parent firm of the social-media platform Snapchat &mdash; are down nearly 15% today because the company withheld its outlook for the rest of the year. There&rsquo;s just too much uncertainty, execs said, about whether advertisers will cut their spending.
As it happens, Facebook/Instagram parent Meta reports its numbers after the closing bell today. Could be interesting&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Power Outages and AM Radio
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Good reads and points to be aware of,&rdquo; a reader writes after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/trump-is-into-polymetallic-nodules">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a> with an update on the power outage in Spain &mdash; complete with personal preparedness guidance.
Specifically pertaining to AM radio, he says, &ldquo;Last summer I was made aware that the Federal Communications Commission was considering eliminating AM radio. Yet AM radio is listened to by many and, as noted in your article, virtual backup.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Whoa, there. We&rsquo;ve actually covered this matter before. To be precise, the issue a couple of years ago was whether automakers would remove AM radio from their new models.
The problem is the interference &mdash; static, buzzing and so on &mdash; generated by various electronic components in modern cars. It&rsquo;s especially a problem with electric vehicles.
The automakers are all over the map as far as their approaches. Ford is the one closest to doing away with AM altogether. Toyota, Honda and Stellantis (Jeep, Ram) are among the automakers who&rsquo;ve committed to keeping AM (and presumably doing the electronic shielding necessary to prevent interference).
Legislation requiring the automakers to provide AM went nowhere in the previous Congress, but it&rsquo;s been reintroduced in the current session.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Not only do you need an AM radio, but FM could prove necessary too in the event of a national grid failure,&rdquo; adds our final correspondent.
&ldquo;And don't forget to protect the radios from EMP by storing them wrapped in an EMP blanket.&rdquo;
Dave: Yes, FM will help for information closer to home.
If you want to know which nearby radio stations are most likely to still be up and running with backup power and emergency announcements, you might try a web search for stations that are designated &ldquo;LP-1&rdquo; and &ldquo;LP-2.&rdquo; Perhaps your state broadcasters association has a list: I was able to readily locate one for <a href="https://www.tab.org/emergency-systems/texas-state-eas-plan">Texas</a> and another for <a href="https://www.michiganmedia.com/area-eas-schedules/">Michigan</a>.
Both of the AM models I mentioned yesterday have excellent FM reception as well.
EMP? I&rsquo;m not nearly as concerned about that as I am about <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/march-market-madness#4">a big solar flare &mdash; bigger than the one that disrupted farmers and others a year ago.</a> But a Faraday bag (or a home safe) does the trick in both instances.
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets
P.S. A belated thank you to those readers who wrote in to wish me a speedy recovery from the stomach flu that sidelined me part of last week. I&rsquo;m pleased to report my aging immune system did everything it&rsquo;s supposed to and I&rsquo;m at full strength!

MiningStocks

Although the details are fuzzy, Interior Secretary Burgum invoked the possibility of Washington forming a “sovereign wealth fund.” 

Trump Wants to Buy Mining Stocks

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Trump Is Into &ldquo;Polymetallic Nodules&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Trump&rsquo;s Brazen Push to Mine the Ocean Floor&rdquo; says the alarmist headline at Foreign Policy.
Last week, the president signed an executive order that would speed along efforts to explore and recover mineral wealth on the seafloor in both U.S. and international waters. Today, executives with a couple of companies pioneering undersea mining are testifying before the House Natural Resources Committee.
As Foreign Policy writer Christina Lu sees it, &ldquo;Trump is embracing a nascent industry that has engendered fierce clashes among mining companies, countries, scientists, and environmentalists. The Trump administration&rsquo;s move amounts to a sharp break in U.S. policy&hellip;&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />A sharp break, yes. But it&rsquo;s very much in keeping with the &ldquo;American birthright&rdquo; thesis that our Jim Rickards has been propounding this year.
In short, there&rsquo;s a horde of energy and mineral wealth underneath vast tracts of federally owned land &mdash; potentially valued at up to $150 trillion. The Trump administration is keen to unlock that wealth.
Mining metals from the seafloor? That&rsquo;s just the next logical step in this regard.

<blockquote>➢ Editor&rsquo;s note: A short time ago, Jim wrapped up his American Wealth Summit &mdash; in which he revealed a patented strategy that could accelerate your gains from the $150 trillion American birthright. <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2436019">If you missed the event at 2:00 p.m. EDT, you can click here to watch the replay immediately</a>.</blockquote>

If you&rsquo;ve been reading these 5 Bullets for a couple of years or longer, you&rsquo;re already familiar with the potential of undersea mining.
At a time when electric vehicles were all the rage, our tech-investing authority Ray Blanco said undersea mining was the only way to supply the necessary quantities of EV battery minerals.
&ldquo;Polymetallic nodules&rdquo; is what scientists call these undersea deposits. &ldquo;Dark gray lumps of metal, roughly the size and shape of large potatoes,&rdquo; is how Ray describes them &mdash; with &ldquo;high concentrations of nickel, cobalt, manganese and copper.&rdquo;

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/bXfKjTV974lnkWDFuPUfS/e077a84616562a495e328fadbf2d2797/Manganese-nodule.jpg" alt="Manganese nodule" width="400px" />

Manganese nodule collected from the Pacific Ocean [Photo by Wikimedia Commons user &ldquo;Kolle&rdquo;]
Yes, it&rsquo;s controversial.
As an article at Mother Jones puts it, &ldquo;Scientists have warned that the process could irreparably alter the seabed, kill extremely rare sea creatures that haven&rsquo;t been named or studied, and &mdash; depending on how the metals are carried up to the surface &mdash; risk introducing metals into fisheries that many Pacific peoples rely upon.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> But the alarmists should relax a bit. It&rsquo;s not as if giant underwater bulldozers and backhoes would be digging up huge quantities of earth.
Thanks to a happy geological accident, the nodules sit atop the ocean floor, ripe for the picking. As Ray explained it here in 2023, &ldquo;These metal-rich rocks litter much of the ocean floor, making the &lsquo;mining&rsquo; process more like retrieval than conventional mining.
&ldquo;Another argument in favor of the process? Transportation via ship is far more efficient than any method on land.&rdquo;
Indeed, the green-energy crowd should be receptive to undersea mining &mdash; given that in many instances &ldquo;the materials required to produce clean energy solutions simply cannot be mined on land.&rdquo;
Yes, the technology is still by and large untested and there might be unforeseen costs.
&ldquo;The processes we use to mine these metals on land, however, also have steep costs,&rdquo; Ray points out &mdash; &ldquo;and mining the oceans might be a significant improvement in many ways.&rdquo;
Again, it&rsquo;s early days for undersea mining &mdash; but it&rsquo;s something we&rsquo;ll continue to keep an eye on, especially in light of Trump&rsquo;s new executive order.

<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> In the meantime, the president is about to make an entirely different move in early May that could light a fire under certain stocks linked to the &ldquo;American birthright.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s what Jim Rickards described this afternoon during his American Wealth Summit &mdash; complete with three new opportunities to potentially make up to 10 times your money or more in a matter of weeks.
There&rsquo;s still time to move on these opportunities &mdash; but not much, considering that once Trump acts, perhaps as early as Friday, it will be too late to set yourself up to profit. <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2436019">Check out the American Wealth Summit at this link</a>.

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />AMZN: &ldquo;A Hostile and Political Act&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Apparently even a $1 million contribution to Trump&rsquo;s inauguration doesn&rsquo;t buy you the president&rsquo;s goodwill.
That&rsquo;s how much Amazon founder Jeff Bezos kicked in for Trump 47&rsquo;s big bash in January.
As we mentioned in the run-up to Election Day, Bezos had <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/bezos-accepts-trump">made his peace</a> with the prospect of a second Trump term &mdash; even barring the editorial board at his Washington Post from endorsing a presidential candidate.
But that was then and this is now: Early this morning, the Punchbowl News site reported that Amazon &ldquo;will soon show how much Trump&rsquo;s tariffs are adding to the price of each product, according to a person familiar with the plan. The shopping site will display how much of an item&rsquo;s cost is derived from tariffs &mdash; right next to the product&rsquo;s total listed price.&rdquo;
The response from the White House was incandescent. &ldquo;This is a hostile and political act by Amazon,&rdquo; said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> For its part Amazon says it never intended to make the labeling a widespread practice. 
&ldquo;The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products,&rdquo; per a company statement. &ldquo;Teams discuss ideas all the time. This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties.&rdquo;
<blockquote>➢ Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports that sometime today Trump will sign an executive order dialing back the tariffs on imported vehicle parts &mdash; an important step to help protect auto worker jobs in Michigan, where he plans a rally tonight to mark the 100th day of his second term.</blockquote>
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The rest of the stock market fared better than Amazon today.
Shortly before the close, the S&amp;P 500 was up nearly 0.7% to 5,566 &ndash; the highest since the post-&ldquo;Liberation Day&rdquo; freefall. Treasury yields continue to ease off, the 10-year note down to nearly 4.17%.
Gold is in the red but still holding the line on $3,300. Silver is in the red but still holding the line on $33.
For no obvious reason crude tumbled 2.8% today. At $60.29, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is the lowest in over two weeks.
Bitcoin has pushed past $95,000 for the moment. We&rsquo;ll see if it can stick.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Follow-Up: The Pain in Spain
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The lights are (mostly) back on in Spain and Portugal &mdash; and our initial assessment yesterday of what triggered the blackout seems to be holding up.
It all has to do with something called &ldquo;inertia&rdquo; &mdash; which in the context of the power grid means the steady, always-on spinning turbines powered by fossil fuels or uranium. Solar and wind just can&rsquo;t supply the necessary inertia because the sun doesn&rsquo;t always shine and the wind doesn&rsquo;t always blow.
Apparently there was next to no wind in wide swaths of Spain yesterday &mdash; and at the moment just before the power went out at lunchtime, the grid was over 75% reliant on wind and solar.
A few things come to mind here, in no particular order&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Several U.S. states are barreling down the same path as Spain in a fruitless quest for zero-carbon nirvana. Worse, some of them are in cold climates like New York and Michigan</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>We&rsquo;ll remind you <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-monster-that-ate-the-power-grid-ai">once more</a> the U.S. grid&rsquo;s capacity is no greater now than it was over a decade ago&hellip; and AI data centers are sucking up ever-increasing quantities of juice</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The combined population of the area affected by the outage yesterday is about 60 million &mdash; on par with the big Northeast blackout of 2003.</li>
</ul>
Feeling vulnerable all of a sudden? Read on&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Power Outage Preparedness
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> It&rsquo;s worth thinking about personal resilience at a time like this.
During the run-up to Russia&rsquo;s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, we took note of concerns on the part of the &ldquo;prepper&rdquo; crowd that Moscow might try to knock out the U.S. power grid and communication systems.
Obviously nothing came of that&hellip; but the guidance we shared then still applies. No electricity means no credit/debit cards and no power to the gas pumps.
Keep a wad of cash, keep your tank at least half full and keep your battery-powered devices charged.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> And keep a portable radio on hand. It might be old-school technology, but in a pinch it might also be your only source of information.
In addition to the power grid, the internet and the wireless network were down for many folks in Spain and Portugal &mdash; including an expat couple from Virginia named Siegfried and Christine, living on the outskirts of Madrid.
&ldquo;If it wasn&rsquo;t for the radio, we&rsquo;d struggle to find out what&rsquo;s happening,&rdquo; they tell the BBC. &ldquo;I think there might be a run on battery-operated radios as soon as the shops reopen.&rdquo;
Of course, there&rsquo;s an additional problem: By many accounts, not every radio station had the backup power to stay on the air.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Here in the States, there are about 75 &ldquo;Primary Entry Point&rdquo; radio stations that are outfitted for a true SHTF scenario, not just a power outage or natural disaster.
In 2018, the trade publication Inside Radio reported on WLW Cincinnati&rsquo;s hardened setup in the suburb of Mason: &rdquo;The fenced-in, shed-like 8-by-20-foot structures include all the things needed to broadcast remotely, including a studio, backup transmitter and generator, as well as facilities for a two-person staff such as a 60-day supply of food and water, bunks and an air filtration system.&rdquo; [Emphasis ours]
Pretty hard-core, huh? And FEMA foots most of the bill.
 <img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1uwIdOhoI7vU5ZzfzWPxdK/c016a6edbb2a8cf6bf93bc7a1d2a8785/SHTF-studio.png" alt="SHTF studio" width="400px" />  Ready for (nearly) anything: The SHTF studio at the transmitter site of WLW Cincinnati [FEMA photo]
FEMA has <a href="https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/practitioners/integrated-public-alert-warning-system/broadcasters-wireless">a list of these PEP stations</a> on its website. You can sort the list by state to find the station nearest you. Most of them are in the AM band with wide coverage areas, especially at night.
If you live in the sticks like me, you might want to invest in a quality AM radio instead of relying on whatever&rsquo;s in your junk drawer. An excellent choice is the Sangean PR-D4W, currently available from Amazon and Walmart for about $70. If you want to go all out for performance, the CCRadio 2E from the American firm C. Crane will set you back $199.
As a bonus, both models come with the NOAA Weather Radio band and can trip an alarm in the event of something like a tornado warning.
Because you never know, right?
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Nukes and Scandals
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;I have long thought that the Indo-Pak skirmishes could well be the starting point of nuclear holocaust,&rdquo; writes one of our regulars after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/trump-revives-clinton-scandal">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>.
&ldquo;Perhaps, Robert Plant and Led Zeppelin were being prophetic when they wrote this verse to their very popular song &lsquo;Kashmir,&rsquo; back in the &rsquo;70s:
Oh, all I see turns to brown
As the sun burns the ground.
And my eyes fill with sand
As I scan this wasted land.
Tryin' to find, tryin' to find where I've been, ah-ah, ah-ah...
&ldquo;Praise the lord and pass the iodine pills&hellip;&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> After we recounted the tale of Bill Clinton, Indonesian cash and a bipartisan cover-up off the top <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/trump-revives-clinton-scandal">yesterday</a>, a reader saw fit to write.
&ldquo;First, a big thank you to you and your team.
&ldquo;Sadly, the last 60-plus years of our republic are replete with betrayals from the left wing and the right wing of the buzzard. We the People are just plain buzzard bait.
&ldquo;And they are still wondering why the People voted the way they did last November.
&ldquo;Likely be betrayed again. But only time will tell.
&ldquo;Again, thanks.&rdquo;
Dave responds: And people think I&rsquo;m cynical.
(I&rsquo;m actually going to write about that sometime soon&hellip;)
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

shutterstock 1140092966

Last week, the president signed an executive order that would speed along efforts to explore and recover mineral wealth on the seafloor. 